lois palframan ARTIST
lois palframan
ARTIST
photo by Rebecca Williams
atrocity series/forest bathing series. photos of the unbearableness of life are surrounded/overlapped by the colours of nature- actual colours gathered from nature- plant materials. ( Martin Seel- 'aesthetic practice, aesthetic freedom.' 'aesthetics of appearance' as opposed to the 'wildest dreams focused on logic' )
photo by Roddy McMillan.
Lois Palframan‘s parents went to Leeds Art College where they became evangelical christian missionaries. Their own life is influenced by their reaction to religion through art, and early experience of music. Always drawn, becoming more refined into markmaking by a process of improvisation. Having gained a degree in Environmental Science and an MA in Art at Leeds Metropolitan University, Palframan won a scholarship to study philosophy via the International Society for Philosophers.
Palframan has made many artists books entirely of drawings (post-conceptual) which are in international exhibitions and collections including Tate’s library. The artist has shown work widely in solo and group exhibitions. Over the past 2 years, they have worked with improv musicians producing audiovisual concerts (Iklectik, London and Access, Sheffield), playing and vocalising drawings.
Nature Grab- an emancipatory impulse- grabbing colour from nature to make drawings; trying to find my own embodied voice - performance; trying to connect with the subconscious- writing.
Use of natural materials
Nature- that which can be objectified (Foucault)
An Ostensive sign- colours of flowers/leaves/plants are designated as having an attribute of healing.
Ostensive signs (Gans, 1981) are performatist, demonstrative, monist, post post-modern. Eshelman (2008) describes the deeply negative and irresponsible attitude of post-modernism. Performatism is a responsible attitude that faces up to the truth of the human subject’s capacity to posit (e.g. to posit a larger, all-encompassing truth- God, Time, the Unknown, Fate, any doxa etc) in a dualist schema where the subject is absolved of responsibility.
Healing= peace of mind, sanity, ability to think clearly
Traumatic Image= persistent, overwhelming, loss of subjectivity, confusing, stomach bashing.
Process- Colours gathered from flowers/plants/leaves are applied around and overlapping traumatic photos. Thereby representing healing, so that healing is known and appropriated ‘ready for use’ (a Heideggerian analytic term).
What is/can be known- I suggest flowers, trees, plants are emancipatory in form and colour because they survive despite humans. Emancipation is necessary for peace of mind, sanity, ability to think clearly. Adorno’s aesthetic philosophy (the benchmark of aesthetic philosophy) is emancipatory. He had an emancipatory impulse. (Claussen’s biography)
Since December 2021 I have been producing monthly 20 x 20 cm drawings- natural materials on canvas panels (42) recently including traumatic photos.
Eric Gans (1981)- the origin of language, a formal theory of representation.
Raoul Eshelman (2008) Performatism or the end of Postmodernism.
Monthly drawings on 20 x 20cm canvas panels, usually using plant materials- gathering colour and applying it unseen and in an improvised way. The colours of flowers, plants, leaves are designated as healing and these are used to surround and overlap a traumatic image of my young father as a soldier in Malaya in 1952 (‘Father tree’). ‘Badger tree’ is colours gathered from three plant materials in an area seen as frequented by 3 badgers and 3 crows. ‘Cezannes’s tree’ from leaves off a tree that I can see looking like a tree in a Cezanne painting. ‘Sycamore’ is sycamore leaves. ‘War effort’ using colour from a ticket from the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius.
The colours of flowers, plant, leaves are designated as healing because these survive despite humans and are therefore emancipatory in form and colour.
Adorno, the benchmark of aesthetic philosophy, had an emancipatory impulse.
Emancipation is necessary for ethical peace of mind, sanity, ability to think clearly.