Rachel Goodyear is interested in many aspects of contemporary art, from drawing and animation through to sculpture, particularly of porcelain, etc.
Graduating from the Leeds Metropolitan School of Art in 2000 she was short-listed for the Northern Art prize. Subsequently she has also exhibited the Drawing Centre in New York. She describes her work as historical - illusionary and with repeated motifs of “twinning”. One of her favourite mediums is pencil and watercolour with sizes ranging from traditional A4 size to A2 sized images. Her view is that small images pull people in, and cause them to become more intimate with the viewer. When she is drawing she tends to lose herself within the drawing process and hopes, in fact wants the viewer to do the same.
Rachel often uses a motif as a central point to her paintings. The images of animals and animal masks work to capture and enliven the concepts of the human feral behaviours that we have within ourselves. She considers this yin / yang unconscious duality, to be constantly battling deep within ourselves. Therefore, there is lots of doubling within images or twinning as she puts it. Described more fully, there are two halves of the whole, conspiring, pushing and pulling against each other constantly in a way that our brains seem to do on a regular daily basis.
Rachel is based at the Islington Mill in Salford, and the studio is the most important place in her life. When she is within the studio space, she considers this is “like a walk within a sketchpad”. The importance of just being there within the site at Salford (which is an old textiles mall), is vital. Even if she feels it is just to read and sit around and chat without actually having done any art. It’s this environment that gives the stimulation in order to do work. The studio seems to be a room of chaos, but when you’re in the eye of the storm, as she explains, she creates these wonderful works.
Earlier in her career, her own drawing was very private. She studied fine art in order to understand sculpture better, but only when she graduated and moved to the Islington Mill, were where her drawings begun to be exhibited. She was very aware of “losing” the studio atmosphere which is a natural place for other artists to provide constructive critique and it also feels like a general mixing of artists in almost a university type setting. During her early years, she drew on anything. And that means she drew inspiration from any environment and any subject. She explains that motivation is essential to maintain because everybody is looking at her!
At the age of 27 she was diagnosed with Hodgkinson’s lymphoma. This was a turning point for her. She had to adapt to her situation completely as during some weeks she was too weak to do anything productively, but by starting little doodles during her treatment and through, very importantly, the Lyme Arts Foundation (which provides hospital art treatment), she was able to go forward and created a body of work during this time of real discomfort, and describes which she called “too close to the line.” This was the time that she became totally immersed into the Drawing of this body of work, purely for herself. It’s an exclamation of animals together with relationships together with pleasure and pain, the balance of power in drawings. The juxtaposing of the possible with impossible of the everyday things. An example being; “Bats roosting on the underbelly of a dog”, - one of her works shown that this lecture as below.
The imaginary images or indeed the imagery of simple colours, but with disturbed positions of the figurative provide for Rachel the “stumbled upon.” Image. To her, it seems as though it’s something that has been conspiring against you and the image is taken from the deep recesses of the mind.
Within Rachel’s work, there are heavy expanses of graphite. She particularly finds this medium interesting simply because of the physical properties of the materials. Graphite can be a “shape shifter”, - like in the piece of work, entitled “The Gathering” She goes on to say that the title can be a tiny introduction against the work in order to make people think.
In the piece “fallen tree”, this is an example of an image of frozen moments in time, but in an immersed drama is hidden, for example, the skeleton.
In “Bear Kiss.” A motif of the bear is a kind of emblem of power, and yet it is under captivity, and so this provides the illusion that this power under captivity can turn on the Captor themselves at any time.
“Mandrake” is an unsettling view of the gentle tea party, but on closer inspection, looking at the man, his ear is actually bleeding. This I think is an illusion to a feeling I’ve often had when being bored to my wits end and having to just put up with the pain of incessant garbage ramblings at a tea party. A bit like this blog!
Rachel Goodyear exhibits drawings in clusters, as a disjointed narrative, for example, the works. “Thoughts -Ville” this is a cluster of some 30 drawings.
A new experiment is entitled Valley. This is a three panel piece of 1 m x 2 m high, +2 other panels on either side. Within the works, the two outer panels contain a narrative that is very different from the centre one. For example, the Bears are catapulting women across the valley to each other, but within the centre panel, this depicts a very genteel dance within the glade or Valley forest floor.
Rachel explained that she spent ages putting cut out characters onto these panels in order to understand where they fitted best. This reminds me of a technique that Matisse used to use in order to place his figures in his own concept of the perfect place within a drawing or painting. In Rachel’s drawing, the masked figures are dancing to the compulsive fiddler and his music from the top of the pedestal in the middle of the forest. This is quite mesmerising.
On a different theme, there are other ways of drawing also interest Rachel. The idea of the trickster has been a theme of the YSP. How can a drawing slip in and out of two dimensional.
In the work. “King rat” the breath and the postcard of the portrait shows fungi growing out of an eye. I find this very disturbing and suggests that there must be some deeper issues going on in Rachel’s minds.
In dancing devils, this is an animation which was some admitted to the Drawing Centre in New York, and indeed was actually an animation projected onto a drawing, of dancers of light, all gathered within a ring on top of a drawn log of wood.
When describing “Octopus hypnotist” Rachel’s fascination and at the same time revulsion of the sea creature, together with the suggestion of the phallic symbolism was also exhibited in the Drawing Centre in New York.
Rachel went on to explain that residencies are fantastic experiences for younger artists. These get you out of the usual environment and routine. For example, she spent time in Banff, in Canada, which was hugely beneficial to her. The ability to imagine completely new ideas as an artist in residence is also fantastic way to network with other people too. It’s absolutely wonderful to put faces to names and to meet new people, but also to look at what’s available within that environment. You may be working in. She emphasises the importance of understanding to look for what is working and what can be unsettling. For example “The falling the body” on a conveyor belt of other drawings, which was also presented as an animation.
She suggests that her process is based on new ideas with new characters and fragmentation with ambiguous relationships. She describes her more recent work as monochrome with layering and dispersals of other worlds and timescales. For instance, she talks about “stacks”. This is the idea of isolation of a rock stack and the relationships between people. Maybe the separate rocks and people stranded on each of them could be connected through a tiny bridge. Other processes that Rachel often uses in order to inspire her to create further work is the use of collages, in which she finds useful in order to juxtapose images and find what are her major influences at the time of putting those collages together.
I asked Rachel what were her major influences when she was learning the trade? Rachel replied that these were mostly nostalgic collections, she particularly enjoys the work of Louise Bourgeois. In a similar way, Rachel explains that as she finishes one body of work, she often uses the residue of work that has been compiled in order to feed into the next project.
I am extremely grateful to Rachel for her permission granted to me verbally after the lecture to reproduce the photographs of her work for my own research study within this blog.
I took this last point away as being an extremely important part of artistic process, and my conclusion is that the process is in many ways similar to many artists that we are constantly building a body of work based on what we have already done, then injecting new influences and new ideas into new paradigms in order to create something original.
Graduating from the Leeds Metropolitan School of Art in 2000 she was short-listed for the Northern Art prize. Subsequently she has also exhibited the Drawing Centre in New York. She describes her work as historical - illusionary and with repeated motifs of “twinning”. One of her favourite mediums is pencil and watercolour with sizes ranging from traditional A4 size to A2 sized images. Her view is that small images pull people in, and cause them to become more intimate with the viewer. When she is drawing she tends to lose herself within the drawing process and hopes, in fact wants the viewer to do the same.
Rachel often uses a motif as a central point to her paintings. The images of animals and animal masks work to capture and enliven the concepts of the human feral behaviours that we have within ourselves. She considers this yin / yang unconscious duality, to be constantly battling deep within ourselves. Therefore, there is lots of doubling within images or twinning as she puts it. Described more fully, there are two halves of the whole, conspiring, pushing and pulling against each other constantly in a way that our brains seem to do on a regular daily basis.
Rachel is based at the Islington Mill in Salford, and the studio is the most important place in her life. When she is within the studio space, she considers this is “like a walk within a sketchpad”. The importance of just being there within the site at Salford (which is an old textiles mall), is vital. Even if she feels it is just to read and sit around and chat without actually having done any art. It’s this environment that gives the stimulation in order to do work. The studio seems to be a room of chaos, but when you’re in the eye of the storm, as she explains, she creates these wonderful works.
Earlier in her career, her own drawing was very private. She studied fine art in order to understand sculpture better, but only when she graduated and moved to the Islington Mill, were where her drawings begun to be exhibited. She was very aware of “losing” the studio atmosphere which is a natural place for other artists to provide constructive critique and it also feels like a general mixing of artists in almost a university type setting. During her early years, she drew on anything. And that means she drew inspiration from any environment and any subject. She explains that motivation is essential to maintain because everybody is looking at her!
At the age of 27 she was diagnosed with Hodgkinson’s lymphoma. This was a turning point for her. She had to adapt to her situation completely as during some weeks she was too weak to do anything productively, but by starting little doodles during her treatment and through, very importantly, the Lyme Arts Foundation (which provides hospital art treatment), she was able to go forward and created a body of work during this time of real discomfort, and describes which she called “too close to the line.” This was the time that she became totally immersed into the Drawing of this body of work, purely for herself. It’s an exclamation of animals together with relationships together with pleasure and pain, the balance of power in drawings. The juxtaposing of the possible with impossible of the everyday things. An example being; “Bats roosting on the underbelly of a dog”, - one of her works shown that this lecture as below.
The imaginary images or indeed the imagery of simple colours, but with disturbed positions of the figurative provide for Rachel the “stumbled upon.” Image. To her, it seems as though it’s something that has been conspiring against you and the image is taken from the deep recesses of the mind.
In the piece “fallen tree”, this is an example of an image of frozen moments in time, but in an immersed drama is hidden, for example, the skeleton.
In “Bear Kiss.” A motif of the bear is a kind of emblem of power, and yet it is under captivity, and so this provides the illusion that this power under captivity can turn on the Captor themselves at any time.
“Mandrake” is an unsettling view of the gentle tea party, but on closer inspection, looking at the man, his ear is actually bleeding. This I think is an illusion to a feeling I’ve often had when being bored to my wits end and having to just put up with the pain of incessant garbage ramblings at a tea party. A bit like this blog!Rachel Goodyear exhibits drawings in clusters, as a disjointed narrative, for example, the works. “Thoughts -Ville” this is a cluster of some 30 drawings.
A new experiment is entitled Valley. This is a three panel piece of 1 m x 2 m high, +2 other panels on either side. Within the works, the two outer panels contain a narrative that is very different from the centre one. For example, the Bears are catapulting women across the valley to each other, but within the centre panel, this depicts a very genteel dance within the glade or Valley forest floor.
Rachel explained that she spent ages putting cut out characters onto these panels in order to understand where they fitted best. This reminds me of a technique that Matisse used to use in order to place his figures in his own concept of the perfect place within a drawing or painting. In Rachel’s drawing, the masked figures are dancing to the compulsive fiddler and his music from the top of the pedestal in the middle of the forest. This is quite mesmerising.
On a different theme, there are other ways of drawing also interest Rachel. The idea of the trickster has been a theme of the YSP. How can a drawing slip in and out of two dimensional.
In the work. “King rat” the breath and the postcard of the portrait shows fungi growing out of an eye. I find this very disturbing and suggests that there must be some deeper issues going on in Rachel’s minds.
In dancing devils, this is an animation which was some admitted to the Drawing Centre in New York, and indeed was actually an animation projected onto a drawing, of dancers of light, all gathered within a ring on top of a drawn log of wood.
Rachel went on to explain that residencies are fantastic experiences for younger artists. These get you out of the usual environment and routine. For example, she spent time in Banff, in Canada, which was hugely beneficial to her. The ability to imagine completely new ideas as an artist in residence is also fantastic way to network with other people too. It’s absolutely wonderful to put faces to names and to meet new people, but also to look at what’s available within that environment. You may be working in. She emphasises the importance of understanding to look for what is working and what can be unsettling. For example “The falling the body” on a conveyor belt of other drawings, which was also presented as an animation.
She suggests that her process is based on new ideas with new characters and fragmentation with ambiguous relationships. She describes her more recent work as monochrome with layering and dispersals of other worlds and timescales. For instance, she talks about “stacks”. This is the idea of isolation of a rock stack and the relationships between people. Maybe the separate rocks and people stranded on each of them could be connected through a tiny bridge. Other processes that Rachel often uses in order to inspire her to create further work is the use of collages, in which she finds useful in order to juxtapose images and find what are her major influences at the time of putting those collages together.
I asked Rachel what were her major influences when she was learning the trade? Rachel replied that these were mostly nostalgic collections, she particularly enjoys the work of Louise Bourgeois. In a similar way, Rachel explains that as she finishes one body of work, she often uses the residue of work that has been compiled in order to feed into the next project.
I am extremely grateful to Rachel for her permission granted to me verbally after the lecture to reproduce the photographs of her work for my own research study within this blog.
I took this last point away as being an extremely important part of artistic process, and my conclusion is that the process is in many ways similar to many artists that we are constantly building a body of work based on what we have already done, then injecting new influences and new ideas into new paradigms in order to create something original.
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