Today we are opening up the 2020 lockdown sketchbook of Marina Devlin! This is a delicate and beautiful collection of drawings, on smooth, off-white notebook paper, using the simplest of materials; the coloured pencil. The drawings are elegant in their simplicity and the softness of the lines suit the different leaves and petals perfectly. They are reminiscent of vintage botanical drawings and Audubon Society prints.
It is lovely to see Marina Devlin working in this new medium. Normally Marina works on canvas, with acrylic paint and in dense full colours. Her compositions are symbolic, complex and exquisitely composed. We absolutely love Marina’s unique style and her ability to share her perspective with us. She is just one of the many personalities we are all missing so much! Project Ability tutor and follow artist, Sharon Quigley, has been Zooming with Marina over the last several months, and they’ve been sharing creative ideas and stories about life in lockdown.
We caught up with Sharon to see how the video art workshops with Marina are going:
“Working with Marina has been a joy over the last few months. She’s an inspiration! We often start the session with a quick catch up, chatting about the week that’s gone and sharing our feelings about the current situation. What comes next is always an intensive hour (sometimes more) of drawing, often carried out in silence, only broken when Marina has a query about a specific technique such as mixing colour. She focuses all of her attention and energy on her artwork when working in a way that would make other artists envious. Here are a group of portraits made of her ‘team’ created for the forthcoming 100 Portraits project. It’s a bit of an honour to be considered part of ‘Team Marina’!” ~Sharon Quigley
Project Ability has been checking in with many of our artists, to offer artistic support and to see if they would like some art supplies sent to their home. Our technician Jim has been packing up materials and sending them out to people. Marina received some coloured pens that blend with water like paint. Apparently she was very delighted with these particular pens and declared “I’ve never known anything like that in all my nelly puff!” On this Zoom call Marina happily spent over an hour with Sharon chatting and drawing and in the end critiqued the session by saying to Sharon, “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself”!
Below is a gallery with a selection of some of the images in the sketchbook, along with a couple images from the Zoom sessions Marina and Sharon are having. The sketchbook has featured in both of our lockdown exhibitions, ‘As Time Stood Still,’ Part One and Part Two. The end of this gallery shows a few of the large paintings Marina was working on before the studios closed down. Her paintings tell a complex and intriguing story. The lockdown sketchbook looks like a good way of sketching out subject matter for composing onto a big canvas, once we are back in the studios! We love these beautiful drawings and without knowing exactly what, when or how, we think it is safe to say we will be seeing some of this flora again at some point in our online shop….. tea towel, greeting card, postcards…??
