drawings (visual works)
Art and Design | Art Practice | Illustration
Tight? is drawn with graphite, ink, and Sharpie.
I work in ink pen, graphite and Sharpie in order to investigate relationships.
The graphite figures look tangible. But in contrast, the ink work doesn't convey an actuality, it hints but never directly portrays - they're worked in abstraction. And the people I yearn to be closest to, the qualities I crave, often feel just out of my grasp, as though they were teasing me.
This oeuvre seeks to tell stories: personal narratives about myself and those closest to me, and how they affect my connection with other aspects of my life. I approach this by combining two different styles: one representing my own sense of reality, my self-tangibility, while the abstraction signifies the other, be it a person or a concept — and my disconnected grasping or conceptualizing of the other. I pursue this vulnerability in large part due to the photography blog Humans of New York. I am encouraged by Brandon Stanton's storytelling that works to bring humans across the world into a deeper understanding of one another's plights.
In addition to reaching out, my method delves inward. It integrates a mark-making that is similar to Zentangle, a relatively new viral doodling phenomenon that prompts meditation. I get lost in this work and wish to find restoration for aches that still linger. This style enables me to explore dynamics within and outside of myself. In order to best depict that, it needs to be contrasted in a manner that looks tangible. I am here, I am constantly grappling with who I am becoming. But sometimes what I need or want, be it a person or a quality, is strangely translucent.
Ambrose, Heidie, "Tight?" (2016). 2016 Student Thesis Exhibition. Image. Submission 1.