BETWEEN A ROCK
AND A HARD PLACE
Image: Deborah Singleton, El Greco, 2021, charcoal on paper, 56 x 76 cm
DEBORAH SINGLETON
16 - 26 June 2022 @ CCAS MANUKA
This exhibition is comprised of a series of drawings and paintings produced during the period of COVID-19 lockdowns in Paris from 2020-2021.
Artist Statement:
The works reflect the adaptation of my working processes to the circumstances of lockdown and are a response to the experience of confinement. The exhibition concentrates on two strands of my work during this period: still lives and charcoal drawings of ‘scenes’ constructed from materials and objects at hand as well as religious and touristic figurines. Both offered a way of continuing an observation-based practice informed by art history within the constraints of lockdown.
The scenes depicted in the drawings were arranged in small still-life boxes with controlled lighting and often refer to the iconography of classical and Baroque painting. Some feature religious figurines commonly available in churches, which are themselves modelled on the painterly representations of saints and other religious figures. They are combined with flowers, fruit and vegetables that are in the process of desiccation.
The theme of decay, present in both the paintings and the drawings, is related to the experience of the distortion and disruption of time during lockdown. I believe this is the outcome of a suspension of ‘normal’ routines, isolation and minimal contact with the activity of the external world. The subjects of the paintings and drawings (traditional still life objects and the constructed scenes) provided a psychological bridge to the world of the museums which I was missing but on a scale that was suited to the domestic environment in which I was confined.