Holly Fay’s exhibtion “Drawing Water'“ is at Slate Fine Art Gallery from October 10 - 31, 2024.
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 10 from 5:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
“Drawing Water” engages with concepts of cycle and flux within the hydrosphere. All water present at the beginning of the planet is present today, cycling through and over the earth, moving through the sky, and moving through all the planet’s beings.
Water unequivocally demonstrates the interconnectivity of all natural phenomena.
I use drawing processes to visually conceptualize the wonder present in the hydrosphere. In my series of large-scale drawings, subtle layers of graphite are applied to paper in successions of building up, lifting, and reapplying. The forms produced are void of defined contours, evoking fluidity and continual flux. Linear marks break up the recessive space of conventional landscape to propose the multidimensional aspects and transitory qualities of water, energy, and physical space.
In creating the Water Graphs series, I worked outside, in concurrency with active precipitation. The resulting exquisitely patterned watercolour and graphite works record the presence, actions, and interactions of the precipitation within the time frame the papers are exposed. Correspondingly, dates and the form of precipitation are recorded in the title of each work.
In creating the States of Flow series, I allowed watercolour and liquidized graphite to do what water does when applied to paper—pool, dilate, bloom, stream and merge. Through brushwork, I controlled the application of media to produce forms suggestive of water in states of solid, liquid and vapour.
Water in liquid, vapour, and solid states make up the life system of the planet.
Coinciding with the need for scientific analyses of the natural world, there is also a necessity for meaning gained through personalized acknowledgement and acclaim for the marvels and wonder present in the natural systems which sustain us. In this time of climate crisis and climate anxiety our felt connection to, and the interconnectedness of all natural phenomena is ever more profound, conspicuous, and present.
(*Written by Slate Fine Art Gallery).
Holly Fay, “Rise and Fall”, 2023, tinted graphite, graphite, gouache on paper, 14x11”
Holly Fay, “Deep Hibernal”,2024, watercolour, graphite on paper,22x30
Holly Fay, "Fleeting - Flux Series", 2023, graphite, tinted graphite on paper, 14x11"