Articulated (back)

Title: Articulated (back)
Medium: Three colour lithograph
Paper size: 43.3 x 53 cm
Image size: approx 25 x 32.5 cm
Edition size: 25

"These lithographs show three different views of a skull. The term ‘articulated’, in relation to a skeleton, indicates that all the bones have been hinged together in the same relative position to each other, as they were when the person was alive—the individual parts made coherent. More generally articulated refers to something clearly defined, or to something said very clearly, so that each word or syllable can be heard.

In these works, fluid broad areas are overlaid with tighter more prominent defining marks to articulate the form, capturing the complex range of solid and intricate sections that make up the skull.

My skull work, since 2012 —mostly rendered in watercolour, but also in clay, bronze and oils—has revisited the same particular skull over and again in a repetitive practice of close looking and re-looking. This focused practice amounts to a meditation on life and living, its transience and fragility, on presence and absence, rather than on a skull as a symbol of danger or anything ghoulish." Joni Brenner