Artist statement

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="0a9fd5a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Penny Burnfield</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Penny Burnfield"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <B>Artist statement</B>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" Links"><U> Links</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="photos of my work"><U>photos of my work</U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="0aad2043.jpg"> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Artist statement</I></div> <div> I am interested in the human compulsion to collect - specimens, relics of the past.   Through these we try to make sense of our chaotic world by categorising, labelling, classifying.  Often such things are displayed in museums, where they are further contextualised and validated by diagrams and the written word.  Other items are conserved and stored away, half forgotten, in the basement.</div> <bR> <div> Labels are necessary, but these are often unintelligible to the casual observer, who does not understand the codes and reference numbers.  My labels are also cryptic, and refer to the development of the work in my own codes.</div> <bR> <div> Sources include all museums, but especially the Natural History Museum in London, the Science Museum, the British Museum (mummy wrappings and bundles) and Medical Museums.  I look for fundamental organic forms, such as are found in simple invertebrates, seeds, pollen grains, and fossils.     The work also draws on artefacts of the past, and the history of Science and Alchemy, and I am interested in the development of writing.</div> <bR> <div> I am always drawn to any art work which consists of repeated units, grids, collections.  My work is usually in the form of multiples and the relationship of the parts to each other in space is central to any piece.  Formal qualities - abstract composition, surface and colour, are important and the finished work must give me (and the viewer) some aesthetic pleasure, whatever its content.</div> <bR> <div> Drawing (usually monoprints), collages and painting are parallel activities.  The two activities cross-fertilise but I do not work from my drawings, preferring to work directly with the materials.  Research takes place by visting museums, studying books, and even TV programmes.  I make lots of notes.</div> <bR> <div> A retired Doctor, in the 1990s I undertook a degree in Textiles as Fine Art.  I now see myself as a sculptor.  I still use textiles predominantly in my work because their organic and repetitious qualities suit the forms I make.</div> <bR> <div> I have always had a compulsion to make things.  I enjoy my work and sharing my own 'peculiar' artistic vision with other people.  And, like the alchemists of old, I see myself as the 'base material' which I hope to transfrom through my work.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>