|
|
Media -
Oil Paintings
Address - Glenard House, Maam
Co Galway, Ireland
Phone - +35391571983
Website - www.lyndacookson.com
Email - [email protected]
Artist Statement
Lynda Cookson
On a deeper level than the notions of freedom and rebellion, incorporating colour and
movement, Cookson works with what she terms the 'behind music'; she works with the masks of
protection and the layers of learning people develop and build up through their lives; and she
works with how they learn to live with those masks and layers; and how they achieve their
wisdom.
The 'behind music' she refers to is all the parts of a symphony concert in their separate
forms, all the patterns of sound, the individual notes, the individual instruments, the
emotions elicited, the energy expended and the people involved, which unite to make the
complete piece of music so beautiful, soul-reaching, acceptable and exciting to the masses of
people who listen to it.
The parallel is the lives people are living, learning and sculpting to make themselves better
and more wise; to make themselves more beautiful, valuable and acceptable to the society they
belong in, while still coping with the energy needed to smooth out every-day stresses in
meeting their challenges.
Cookson's recent work has been influenced by Irish painter Louis le Brocquy. Other influences
include Kenneth Webb, Jack Yeats and Matisse. Memories of Picasso slip in now and then.
Cookson says of her methods and techniques: 'True inspiration comes when I am excited by a
subject to the point of sleeping badly at night and (preserve me!) wanting to get up early in
the morning. I use oils, sometimes acrylics, on artist-prepared stretched linen canvas or
linen-covered board, occasionally using my own handmade paper and various fabrics for texture
beneath the paint. I like the surface to have a 'tooth'. Much of my work is done with palette
knives and brushes but I also use sponges, my fingers, pieces of cardboard, paper table
napkins and scrunched plastic. In fact, whatever is to hand in the moment of need! My work
tends to be colourist in that I build up layers of pure colour often allowing the lower layer
to show through, giving movement and life to the painting.
'I use my imagination, freedom of colour and stroke-movement, to bring my art to life, finding
inspiration in the unexpected and in the use of 'rebellious' colours.
'Once the painting is complete it's important for me to be impelled to look at it again and
again and to feel the butterflies of pleasure in what has been created - otherwise I paint
over it again!'
February 2008
|
