A whole world on paper: a British woman creates incredible landscapes with an ordinary pen
British artist Olivia Kemp creates large-scale drawings that combine her memories of Norway, Italy and Scotland with fantastic places that exist only in her imagination.
Creating her incredibly detailed works, the girl often falls into a trance-like state, and sometimes the final result surprises even her.
Each drawing of Olivia looks like a collage of intriguing images, intertwined with witty details and mysterious symbols. The texture of her work is reminiscent of the early engravings of Albrecht Durer, and at the same time they are similar to the etchings of Gustave Dore due to the mood of drama that is hidden in the seemingly ordinary subjects.
In Olivia Kemp's drawings, the bizarre is juxtaposed with the mundane: strange huts built on trees and forming cramped forest towns isolated from modern civilization; abandoned cars, fences, piles of scrap metal; eerie thickets and wastelands; fantastic floating islands and strange creatures. The artist's fascination with everything unusual in nature is contagious, as she clearly enjoys the ridiculous and surreal in the world around her.
Olivia draws with an ink pen. It usually takes her several months to create a single scale drawing. The artist admits that when drawing canvases, she plunges into a state close to trance, when the drawing develops intuitively, the landscape "constructs itself". Olivia herself is often surprised by the final result. When the painting is completed, the artist carefully examines what she managed to embody on the canvas.
Apparently, immersion in the mysterious process of creativity is so important for the author that the final results of the work are often as surprising for her as for the viewer.
Keywords: Britain | Design and architecture | Exhibition | Artist | Details | Drawings | Graphics