Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Olivia Kemp’s Enormous Pen Drawings

Olivia Kemp’s massive drawings, mostly rendered in pen, contain a preposterous amount of detail. Her work often contains historical structures enveloped by the natural world. The drawings can take months at a time to complete.

Olivia Kemp’s massive drawings, mostly rendered in pen, contain a preposterous amount of detail. Her work often contains historical structures enveloped by the natural world. The drawings can take months at a time to complete.

“I draw in order to make sense of landscape but also to construct and remodel it,” the artist says. “I build worlds and imaginary places that grow out of a need to interpret the sites that I have known, expanding and developing them across a page. This encompasses everything, from the visions of a grand landscape right down to the details of the land, the plants and creatures that may inhabit it.”

The artist’s education includes time at Winchester School of Art, Wimbledon College of Art, and the Royal Drawing School. She’s had residencies in Scotland, Italy, Spain, Norway, and elsewhere.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
In her paintings and ink drawings of anthropomorphous forms, Belarusian artist Alina Kunitsyna shares her personal fascination with people, and the ways in which we can simultaneously conceal and express our inward nature. Her series portrays figures obscured within garments, blankets and decorative fabrics, their faces always hidden from our view. And while her subjects may carry an air of mystery, it is through the expressions of their outer shells that we may begin to gain access to their inner worlds.
Polish-born, German-based designer and illustrator Sebastian Onufszak has created graphics for dozens of big-name clients — from Karl Lagerfeld to Starbucks — but in his personal work, he pulls out all the stops. Onufszak's chaotic drawings and paintings look as if the lid of his subconscious was taken off completely. Characters are piled together in an orgiastic cacophony of faces and limbs; every color of the rainbow is used liberally; loud, seemingly meaningless text is scrawled everywhere that it can fit. Calling his style dreamlike would be an understatement, as few of us have dreams quite this vivid.
Los Angeles-based artist Sergio Barrale, who creates enormous, absorbing drawings, is now featured his first major solo show. “Our Private Religion” opens on Saturday (April 1) at Last Rites Gallery and runs through April 22. Barrale was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here, and he was included in Hi-Fructose Magazine Vol. 41.
There's an innocence and fleeing quality about Kevin Townsend's organic chalk drawings that cover entire spaces, an act that he says liberates him from the confines of the artist's studio. We've featured many chalk artists on our blog over the years, but Townsend, who is also a teacher, uses this child's mark making tool specifically for its impermanence. The Boston based artist finds himself captivated by the idea of how time and our perception of it helps to shape our identities, as well as our relationship to overlooked urban environments.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List