Artist Research and Inspiration

SUSAN HEFUNA

Born: 1962

Hometown: Germany

Lives and Works: Cairo, Egypt and Germany

Website: www.susanhefuna.com

Multimedia artist Susan Hefuna draws upon her mixed Egyptian and German heritage in her boundary-breaking art, which explores the intersection of location and identity. Often employing the symbolic element of the mashrabiya—a traditional window screen with carved wood latticework found in Islamic architecture—Hefuna plays with notions of viewing and being observed while at the same time channeling her cultures through her own voice.

In 2009 Hefuna began a site-specific intervention series called Mapping Vienna, which involved such acts as invading the Vienna Opera Ball—an event for the upper class held in a public space—dressed in a black cloak with the words “Patience,” “Beautiful,” and “Vienna,” stitched in large colorful letters. These words are repeated in her installation Patience Beautiful, where the title phrase appears intermixed within the design of a mashrabiya. In her photographs Woman Behind Mashrabiya I and II, the blurred image of the artist overlays the patterns in the window, and her abstract drawings—layered, complex grids—allude to the interiority of cityscapes and constellations.

Hefuna has had solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery and the Sigmund Freud Museum among other venues. Her work has been included in the Venice Biennale, Cairo Biennial, and the International Biennale of Contemporary Art as well as group shows at the Centre de Cultura Contemporania in Barcelona, the Museum of Natural History in Lyon, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Hefuna’s work was recently featured in the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century at tartistshe Museum of Modern Art.

I really enjoy Hefunas use of subtle colour and shades, as well as her use of repetition. The layers of line work create depth and interest, like looking into a window and seeing another image through the glass.

 

Linking Visual Elements to Conceptual Ideas

As my work has developed I have had many people make comments about the visual connection and tendencies my work has to the style of Mandalas.

This idea got me intrigued, so I did some further research into the history, development and meanings of Mandalas. I was surprised to find that many of the concepts, meaning and ideals behind Mandalas really resonate and complement my own views and perspectives.

I found some online explanations about the meaning and significance of the Mandala:

http://spiritualawakening.weebly.com/mandalas-what-are-they.html

What is a Mandala?

A mandala is a sacred space, often a circle, which reveals some inner truth about you or the world around you. In Sanskrit mandala means both circle and center, implying that it represents both the visible world outside of us (the circle whole world) and the invisible one deep inside our minds and bodies (the center- healing circle)

`From Native American and Tibetan sand paintings to Gothic rose windows and Hindu yantras, mandalas are used as symbols for meditation, protection and healing`
Clare Goodwin 1996

Rose Window

Native American -Skyman Mandala

“Mandala art has been used throughout the world for self-expression, spiritual transformation, and personal growth. Mandala is the ancient Sanskrit word for circle and is seen by Tibetans as a diagram of the cosmos. It is used by Native Americans in healing rituals and in Christian cathedrals the labyrinth is a mandalic pattern used as a tool for meditation. An archetypal symbol of wholeness, the mandala was used as a therapeutic art tool by psychologist Carl Jung, who believed creating mandalas helped patients to make the unconscious conscious”

 

A mandala is a picture that tells a story, the story of a journey that we can follow. We all seek happiness and fulfillment, and Mandalas are a tool that can guide us straight to the heart of this search. In following the path through a mandala we are seeking to find the wholeness that lays at the core of us, the stillness that always remains no matter what storms may surround us.

In creating a mandala we open ourselves to all the possibilities that exist inside and outside of us.

A mandala can take any form and there are many natural mandala forms to be found in nature. Mandalas capture a moment in time, embodying it as a circular picture or object. The circle is a potent and universal symbol of wholeness and eternity. The earth we walk on is a circular globe and the sun, moon and stars are all circles.

Mandalas in Nature

The symbols and visual images inscribed in a mandala vary from culture to culture. Some traditions portray pictures of gods and goddesses, some use color and shape, whilst others use natural objects. However, although each may use a different “language”, the mandalas of all cultures describe the same cosmos as our own. Irrespective of their historical and cultural origins, if we let them resonate with us deeply enough, mandalas can lead us on the journey to finding our own inner truth.

Paul Heussentamn

In the last century, the Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung developed the use of mandalas as an aid to psychological understanding. He drew a mandala every day to express his innermost thoughts and feelings. Each time he noticed that the circle he had drawn contained a snapshot of his mental, emotional and spiritual state of being. It was as though the images were reflecting his inner self. He also realized that the expression of the circle was universal, transcending time, place and culture – children spontaneously draw them, as do adults when they doodle, for example.

Jung came to see the mandala as a pathway to the self and he begun to use mandalas in his work as a psychiatrist to help his patients make deeper connections with themselves. The circle or sphere of the mandala represents the psyche that holds within it, at the center, the true self.

Looking deeply into the circle of a mandala means that we must look deeply into ourselves. It can sometimes take courage to study the picture in front of us and see the storms and turmoil as well as the peace and beauty that exists at our center.

By studying a mandala in sufficient detail, we can connect with our inner selves and look out from the center of our being. A mandala may be elegant and intricate, laden with symbols and vibrating with color, or it may simple and sparse. Either way it contains its own wisdom and truth. To unlock its secrets we must look past the first superficial impression and appreciate the detail within each tiny aspect of the pattern.

If we understand the message of each symbol, shape and color it will help change something inside of us and bring us closer to a place of peace. This intricate way of seeing, of always looking more deeply into things, brings an original and fresh way of experiencing the world around us. There is always more to see, and this is the way with mandalas.

 

Its interesting to reflect on the similarities between the patterns I draw and various Mandala Designs.

Different Mandala Designs:

Buddhist Mandalas:

 

Artistic Mandalas:

Experimentation

Using similar techniques and circular patterns I drew an experimental design on my car. I am really happy with the outcome.

 

Completed Work.

 

 

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

A document witten by Bruce Mau, a canadian designer, that always helps me find some extra creativity…

Bruce Mau’s “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth”

http://www.brucemaudesign.com/index.html

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders. You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat. When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh. People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember. Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people. Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

 

Body of work – Progress

 

Pattern layering over yellow background. This work is very time consuming but I am really excited about its development and the way it is begging to take form. I intend to cover the majority of the canvas with pattern and detail.

 

Below: Images of my two largest works. First layer of acrylic undercoat. I plan to layer more washes of greys and blacks while integrating some white detail and pattern to build up a really dynamic background. I am still unsure of the composition of the patterned foreground but I hope that this will come to me as I keep developing the background.

 

 

 

 

Below: Image of left hand canvas while still wet.

 

 

Below: Image of left hand canvas after drying for a few hours. I really love how time and the drying process bring about exciting patterns and seem to evolve into something so unexpected and interesting.

 

 

Below: Image of right hand side canvas.

 

Below: Me working on finishing touches for first piece of work.

 

 

 

Below: Finished Product.

 

 

Below: Detail from above piece.

 

 

 

I am really enjoying the progress of this particular body of work. I am very happy with the way it is all looking at the moment and I am excited by more to come.

Experimentation.

I recently tried some experimental work. I used paint pens to design and decorate an old guitar found at an op shop.

I really like the way this has turned out, although I did encounter some issues. Once detail and patten was drawn onto the guitar surface I realised that the paint would scratch off if left unsealed, so I used some clear spray on sealer to hold the paint in place. 

 

 

I also did some experimenting with ink and tea on paper.

Artwork Progress

Working with very fluid, watered down acrylics I have begun developing some abstract backgrounds. Using subtle colours and tones I am trying to keep my work diluted and soft.

Initial layer of yellow acrylic, with very faint sketch up of intended foreground image.

 

Developing an instruct background for a 3 piece series. colours: black and yellow

Using geometric shapes I’ve created 3 transparent circles for the background, and I have now started on the foreground detail. Colours: warm and cool red, black and white

2 piece composition using geometric shapes, centred and symmetrical. Colours: Blue and Green.

Each piece is currently in a very raw, initial phase and will be further worked and developed.

Artist Research

Del Kathryn Barton

Dels work really inspires me. He use of layers, colour and fine detail directly relates to my own style of work. Although i don’t necessarily identify with her contextual ideas i do really appreciate her technique and skills as an artists.

An article from Art & Australia:

Del Kathryn Barton

The ANZ Private Bank Emerging Artist Program is a unique initiative, featuring the work of eight emerging artists on the back cover of Art & Australia between 2004 and 2006.

Both ANZ Private Bank and Art & Australia recognise the often difficult transition artists experience between graduating from art school and establishing a professional career. Although commercial galleries now seem more willing than ever to take on artists at very early stages in their career – reflecting the buoyancy of the market for contemporary art at the present time – there are still few opportunities for emerging artists to exhibit their work and, importantly, to have it published.

The ANZ Private Bank Emerging Artists Program was conceived as a way of providing much-needed support and encouragement for artists in their first period of professional practice. The artists selected for the back-cover initiative have been nominated by the Art & Australia editorial advisory board. The selected artists, of all ages and locations around Australia, reflect both the quality and diversity of work currently being produced by emerging artists.

We are pleased to present Del Kathryn Barton as the inaugural artist to be nominated for the ANZ Private Bank Emerging Artists Program. Del’s work is distinguished by its technical skill and its vibrant, figurative imagery. Her drawings and paintings encapsulate the exciting crossovers between traditional techniques and contemporary design and illustration which seems to be a hallmark of much emerging artistic practice in Australia at the present time.

Del’s work has a strong foundation of drawing, although she has recently begun to work with painting. She cites artists Kiki Smith, Louise Bourgeois, John Currin and Shirin Neshat as influences, as well as the drawings of Henry Darger, botanical art and fabric design. Her early works featured Egon Schiele-like drawings of naked female bodies entwined with rabbits (which appear repeatedly in her work) but also birds and native animals. The explicit nature of the drawings – with the female genitals depicted in detail and the animals often emerging from the figure’s body – have frequently been read as pornographic. However, rather than intentionally explicit or titillating, the drawings are the product of Del’s interest in the relationship between humankind and nature. She sees a spiritual presence residing in the natural world and is concerned with the effect of this on humankind’s physiological and metaphysical existence.

In her work – of which girl #8 which features on the back cover of the spring 2004 issue of Art & Australia (vol. 42, no. 1) is one example – the depiction of the naked female form has given way to a fascination with the world of children. These detailed, colourful compositions utilising both drawing and painting portray young girls and occasionally boys. The children seem to occupy an imaginary world, surrounded by foliage, abstract shapes and patterns as well as Del’s familiar birds and rabbits. But while the works allude to the innocent, imaginative world of children, the direct, steady gaze of each child implies a certain knowingness or wisdom. The fluidity between the real and the imaginary is a central concern of Del’s practice.

Del Kathryn Barton (born in 1972) studied at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in Sydney, and since 1995 has participated in a range of solo and group exhibitions. She currently lives and works in Sydney where she is represented by Ray Hughes Gallery. In Melbourne she is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery.

Claire Armstrong
http://www.artaustralia.com/emergingartist_delkathrynbarton.asp

My Thoughts:

Dels work shows vulnerability, rawness and is an open expression of her inner psyche. I really enjoy the way Del openly explores and shares her thoughts and dreams through visual interpretations. I am particularly attracted to her use of line. As the image above shows, Del has allowed large amounts of negative space to assist and compliment the line and colour used in the image.

The complimentary pairing of watercolour, fluid-like colourful layers and simple line really creates diversity and visual interest. The strong visual impact of the highly concentrated colour areas are balanced and complimented by soft, fine lines. In my own work I use a similar recipe. I like to begin painting fluid, transparent layers of colour to create an interesting background. This background then influences the detailed line work that I overlay onto the canvas.