The Rowley Gallery window is full of all my own work! A rare treat. I don’t often get the opportunity these days. The idea came to me the day I received a refusal from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition! So here’s my own summer exhibition. A collection of ink drawings on bark paper, some old and some new, scribbles, glyphs, diagrams and prayers.
The most recent are a response to the horror of Palestine. They are totally inadequate but may they serve as a prayer for peace and renewal. They are drawings inspired by trees, some draw themselves, others echo old favourites. I look at trees all the time, I see the ways their branches call and respond, their rhythms and rhymes. These are the songs they sing.
Then there are the Chillida Tree drawings. Eduardo Chillida is a favourite artist, I love his work, many of his sculptures suggest trees, so these are an homage to the master.
Before that there were the Still Life Drawings, again inspired by Chillida, particularly his drawings, and by the sublime pots of Magdalene Odundo. She gave me the black and orange. I made lots of vessel-shaped templates and drew around them. I used Amate bark paper from Falkiner’s and an Automatic Pen from Cornelissen’s.
Another inspiration has been this extraordinary book, page after page of ancient Palestinian olive trees.
“Through burning, uprooting and denying Palestinians access to olive trees, the state of Israel and Israeli settlers have vested the tree with enormous power. The olive’s steadfastness, durability, and extraordinary longevity are all acutely representative of the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s settler colonialism and its occupying regime. The olive acts as both an anchor and an archive, standing for the Palestinians by witnessing and testifying to what is no longer there. Planting and cultivating olives becomes a project of Palestinian resistance.”
Irus Braverman, December 2023, Anchor In The Landscape
With each sale of A Tree For Palestine drawing we will plant an olive tree in Palestine.
Still Life For Palestine
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Christopher Hamer / The Rowley Gallery
