TEXTS
Anne Edmonds, Poiesis
Poiesis is from the Greek poiein, meaning ‘to make’, ‘to create’, ‘to generate’. It is also the foundation of modern poetry and indicative of a philosophical investigation of knowledge and life. As a series of refined works exploring the awe of light the exhibition Poiesis becomes a rhythmical, visual verse. In her series of drawings Anne Edmonds has created a poetic study of light as an underlying principle of transformation. The sensitive application and finely honed erasure of pencil creates subtle tones of presence and absence. The resulting representation of refracted light tempers a sense of spiritual illumination with strength.
Reflecting Light one of the drawings in the exhibition, clearly bridges the fields of art and physics in a sensory portrayal of light that reaches into a rhetoric of the sublime and enlightenment. For the eighteenth century philosopher Emmanuel Kant, the sense of the sublime is intricately linked to ‘nature’ as might. However, where Kant’s sense of the sublime reaches to the limits of fear and infinity, Edmonds burrows down to the minute partical
Unlike the use of dramatic light within the awesome landscapes of eighteenth century masters such as Casper David Friedrich, which conjure an experience of spirituality, Reflecting Light draws on the study of light known as optics to unveil the personal poetry of the mysterious source of wonder. Modern physics identifies the properties of light as both waves and particles. As the properties suggest, light is a manifestation of movement and central to the creation of radiant light and yet Reflecting Light offers an exploration of light that entices the viewer into a moment of reflective stillness.
Important to research in both physics and metaphysics, the presence of light is symbolic of insight and goodness, offering a path to enlightenment. As an element of art, light formulates momentum within the viewer’s vision as it directs attention across the surface. Anne Edmonds’ study of light, however, entices viewer perception to a deeper level of contemplation as if peering through a microscope. Offering a delicate and skilful application of pencil on French Lana paper, the exhibition Poiesis folds light and shadow, generating a mood of restrained energy and illumination that beacons a refined reflection on one’s own inner light.
Shirley Daborn