lois palframan ARTIST
lois palframan
ARTIST
Parents went to Leeds Art College where they became evangelical christian missionaries. My life is influenced by my reaction to religion through art, and early experience of music. Always drawn, becoming more refined into markmaking by a process of improvisation. Degree in Environmental Science;poetry;ecologist;degree in Art; MA in Art 2003, Leeds Met. University. Scholarship to study philosophy (International Society for Philosophers);some languages; teaching; permaculture. interest in feminism, spirituality,
I made many artists books entirely of drawings (post-conceptual)- these are in international exhibitions and collections including Tate Library. Work in many solo and group exhibitions including often in Cupola Gallery, Sheffield; residencies including in Art House Wakefield; artists talks.
For the last 2 years with some of the finest improvising musicians producing audiovisual concerts (Iklectik, London and Access, Sheffield) playing and vocalising the drawings.
2019 Making Ways grant from Sheffield Culture Consortium.
Now living at Unstone Grange, rural retreat. vocalising the drawings myself. Making nature drawings, shamanic now. exhibiting in galleries.
photo by Rebecca Williams
Page 1. taking canvas panel (20 x 20cm) to the woods and 'asking nature for a peaceful drawing'. following birds, shadows, not looking, looking for colour, using natures colours, until some sign of perspective emerges...silence, jaz formation....deep silence where the connections and all potential is....
also reading:-
'The Four Dragons' Damo Mitchell
'Light on Yoga' BKS Iyengar
RHS Book of Pruning and Training
Helen Yemm
Glass
Thich Nhat Hanh
5 Tibetan rites of rejuvenation
Cezanne
Khandro Dechen
Ngakpa Chogyam
Maria Thun
trad.jaz 50s
Centre for Non-Violent Communication
Max Richter
Maggie Nicols
Nina Simone
Artaud
New Music Show
Gertrude Stein
Mary Devereaux
Blake
Yeats
Shakespeare
Philosophy Now
Alice Coltrane
MARCH 2023
Lois Palframan has degrees in Environmental Science and Fine Art and an MA in Fine Art. Her artists books are exhibited and collected internationally including in Tate Library. Previously she made improvised minimalist drawings, as scores played by improvising musicians. She is now working and living at a rural retreat centre and using drawing to connect to nature.
Lois Palframan makes monthly blind improvised drawings, guided by nature. The result is abstract. The titles also are given within the process. Trying to let nature be the artist- guessing that nature is intelligent and thoughtful. She tries to work peacefully with nature to produce visual philosophy.
I made 67 scores, 20 x 20cm monthly canvas panels, in paint, ink, pencil- improvised, abstract, minimal. These have been improvised/played by musicians including myself. Some very short videos made combining score/drawing with the sound response. These are on YouTube and my website. Also a compilation medley of videos (10 minutes).
In 2022, on the same monthly canvas panels, the intention of freedom changed to an intention of peace, the process being asking for help from/working with nature. The new drawings are made by/with natural materials, covering much more of the surface area.
Directly learning from nature (plants, creatures, elements, light) the colours to add directly to the canvas, in an immediate unplanned way (improvised,
blind, going with the flow) seeing nature as intelligent and that it is itself working towards its survival, even letting nature do art, trying to be nature's curator, in respect.
My definition of nature is Foucault's:- 'that which can be objectified'. (but shouldnt)
'mysticism- is ecology- the complex unseen relationships of organisms and their nuances...relating to the linguistic traditions of humanity' Harry Gould Harvey in Art Review April 2022
=SUBREAL
CONNECTION TO NATURE
ROMANTIC 1960
Appreciation, Beauty, Appropriation. ‘The God Father made them all’. Mad unthinking woman. Doodle drawings. Pre-Raphaelites.
SCIENTIFIC 1980
Environmental Science. Ecology, permaculture, climate change, biodiversity. Representation, figuration. women are nature and must be experimented on, punished, controlled. Francis Bacon
Figuration/-Abstraction Cezanne Abstract drawings. Tom Palin
SHAMANIC 2000
Energetic, Imaginative, Philosophical. Haraway, (Castaneda), D'Aoust.
Witch. Subreal, Ettinger. Spirit. Woman and nature are allies, intelligent together for survival, free-ing each other. Drawings with/by nature.
The silence of death and the silence of nature are the same are they?
photo by Roddy McMillan.
I'm not reaching forward with my art. It is not for future generations. There might not be any. This art is for now. It is ephemeral. It is not capturing nature. It is setting nature free.
what is the connection between beauty and energy? how does material affect form?
Blind use of colour from garden. not capturing or manipulating colour or nature but setting colour and nature free. I find when i look at the colours on the canvas they are similar in tone to that of outside skies/colours....
'Art is a harmony parallel to nature'. Cezanne
Inner visualisations, personal. invented. interior artwork....and body health work. independent. october 2022
'In my drawing I lacked sufficient feeling for substantiality. I had a certain fear of letting the objects make their full impact on me; on the contrary, it was the insubstantial and unemphatic elements that appealed to me '. Goethe
theory of colours retarded by maths, .... to rescue the attractive subject of the doctrine of colours from the atomic restriction and isolation in which it has been banished, in order to restore it to the general dynamic flow of life and action.. all colours= harmony= grey, + warm orange= brown' Goethe
'The most sincere expression of the artist, seeing, observing in complete honesty and naivete with correct and precise means, the reality that one finds in front of oneself and the impressions or sensations that it makes one feel' (Cezanne).....
theres no way i can copy that (nature)- infinitely changeable, and complex. nature must speak for itself on the canvas somehow. by talking to the creatures, asking for help, by faith that i am and can work with nature. by blind improvised, -its a risk but got to be better than reducing nature on a canvas to any imposed colours and forms...
'Listen to painting- no subject, no object...if not something like the iron shadow of the motet of an unutterable antique music, like the leitmotiv of a theme despairing of its own subject. It is naked nature and pure sight such as it reveals itself....' Derrida/Artaud, the truth in painting
to say less more, to say less stronger.....