Avis Newman
Born: London, England 1946.
Since 1982, Avis Newman has made drawing the central concern of her art practice. During the early 1980s, her mixed-media work, including The Day's residues, drew upon a profusion of broken lines, marks and scratches to create an imaginary space that referenced the prelinguistic world of cave paintings. Through symbolic references to humans, animals and birds, the artist described how she wished to "suggest the mobility of the image and that ambiguity of form which one experiences in dreams." These discordant works were pieced together from fragments, the exposed areas of paper or canvas ensuring that the work was open and not closed to meaning. In her Webs (backlist) series from 1994, Newman extended her metaphorical enquiry into animal and human forms presenting a series of stretched and unstretched canvas in which the image of a spider's web is of key importance. The Web is alternately revealed and obscured through layers that form the surface of the work, alluding to the problematic nature of representation and acknowledging the gap between idea and realization. Newman has also made a series of boxed works containing natural matters such as feathers, pebbles and sand.
Masterpieces:
The day's residues V1.
Sculpture of essential movements
Web (backlight) v.
text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Images: google images.