Chemo Day Drawings

: , 2019-

: ; cm

Clare Smith. Artists' statement October 2022. 'Drawing is a way of slowing down time I become fully absorbed in the process, often not feeling present in the world but present on the paper. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has a BA in Fine Art from UCA (University for the Creative Arts) and an MA in Fine Art from UAL (Central Saint Martins) and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation and choice of materials. Smith works across genres in drawing, print media, collage and moving image. Her recent work reflects an interest in memory, the marking of time and more recently narrative and the remaking of stories. There is a delicacy and fragility to Smith’s work, which reflects a constant sense of the precariousness of physical existence and a concern with healing. “You are turning life’s experiences into art” (Mike Tonkin, architect, Tonkin Liu architecture) “All my work has an autobiographical connection and comes out of personal experience, everything I have absorbed emotionally and physically. Inspiration is drawn from Chinese and Japanese ceramics, Indonesian and Malaysian batiks; places I’ve lived in, visited or remembered.” Her abstract drawings have been seen in the context of early abstraction prompted by the availability of microscopy, and the possibility of seeing another world, just as real, but ordinarily hidden by virtue of its scale as well as Theosophy and Anthroposophy (Simon Bill, artist and writer) and for Jacqui Mcintosh “There are parallels to be drawn with the automatic and channelled drawings of spiritualist artists such as Georgiana Houghton and Madge Gill as well as the ‘pure psychic automatism’ of surrealism. ” Drawing is a way of slowing down time I become fully absorbed in the process, often not feeling present in the world but present on the paper.'

Artwork featured in Wellcome Collection Stories with article also authored by Clare: https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/Ynz-8BAAACIAL_8T

Collection of 43 loose drawings and 7 drawings in a Chinese book, from a series of over 70.

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