Cityscapes
Cityscapes are a recurrent subject in my work. My life indoors looking out is central to the experience of growing up with a chronic illness.
I would often spend hours observing at the window during multiple convalescences, the view was always from above looking down.
The bird’s eye views became expanded due to the pain medication I had to take to function with flares of my disease.
Morphine made my dreams vivid and floating, truly out of body experiences.
I enjoy the control aspect of mapping out and reclaiming a place I know well, taking control of the exterior right up to the horizon line, when the interior world (domestic, inside the body, inside cells) is in chaos. I made a lot of cityscapes in London as I felt so out of control there, I was encouraged by my late professor at the Royal Drawing School - Tim Hyman RA, to lean into the power of shaping space, time and experience through the anchors of the streets I know. Tim was Influenced by the structural depths and innovation of Siennese Painting which continues in my own inquiry and I feel closer to live and closer to my late friend when I engage with this type of work.
The Royal Drawing School exposed me to the emotive, visceral mark-making of the School of London (Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff), which inevitably weaves its legacy into my own cityscapes exploring memory, space, time, feminist psychogeography, and a reclaiming of the streets for myself as the chronic observer.
It pulls me off the window ledge into life.
Mortiz-Heyman collection