Carmel Buckley

Across the Sea

The exhibition consisted of a series of new drawings that used tracings of leaves from my garden in Cincinnati. The outline tracings became metaphorical windows into an imagined landscape that extended my interest in book illustration from the 19th century and the early-20th century. In these drawings I referenced the work of Harry Clarke and Kay Nielsen.

These drawing use detailed line and pattern to invent a contemporary drawing vocabulary in reference to the intensely rendered imagery of their originals. Referencing these earlier drawings allowed me to explore aspects of perception and legibility, the physical qualities of drawn marks, repetition, and the materiality of images on paper. In zrecent drawings like these I have connected the imagery to the location where I live where the works fluctuate between describing real and imagined spaces.