Drawing from Nature with Charcoal

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This two -day workshop will concentrate on drawing with charcoal, and share with participants the many possibilities of this magical medium.

Over the weekend Sorca will demonstrate working with charcoal on paper, showing how a variety of textures, tones and mark-making can be built up and translate into a unique and personal description. She will also share the source of her inspiration, the trees, and groups of trees she encounters on her walks close to where she lives.

We plan to head out together on the first morning to make small notebook drawing studies of trees in the immediate environment of the workshop, maybe the park opposite The Oak Centre or the grounds of the church next door which has some lovely mature trees.

Once decisions have been made about a satisfactory composition and balancing areas of light and dark, participants will then commence work on larger heavier paper.

Throughout the two days Sorca will move through the group giving one-to-one guidance, with demonstrations and group discussions about how the work is progressing.

Participants will come away from the workshop with a new found joy in the many possibilities of artistic expression through the medium of charcoal.

Biography

Sorca O’ Farrell is a landscape artist from Howth, Co. Dublin.

She studied in DLSAD and the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

Her work is represented in the public art collections of The National Gallery of Ireland,  Allied Irish Bank Collection, The Office of Public Works, Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council, The Department of Transport Northern Ireland, along with many private collections both in Ireland and overseas.

Awards include The Drawing Prize at the Royal Ulster Academy, The Cairde Visual/Hamilton Gallery Award, The Fingal Council ‘Graphics Studio’ Award. Her work has been included in the exhibition ‘A Celebration of Drawing’ at the National Gallery of Ireland. She has also exhibited at many Royal Hibernian Academy’s (RHA) annual exhibitions, The Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) and many other group and solo shows.

A sense of place

“Her current work is a direct and emotional response to the landscape close to where she lives, a place with many memories. It is a living connection to family and to the past and the present. In essence, it is a place for the artist, beyond what we can touch. It is rooted in her emotional core, emblematic and evergreen, living trees standing mute and noble like sentinels that bookend her life from childhood to middle years.

She works with charcoal, built up, fixed and layered, burnished to a velvety sheen, enhanced by ink, and punctuated by pastel hues to convey a rich and atmospheric sense of place. The deliberate use of black and white is a constant, as it suggests memory better than the lure of colour.

O’Farrell’s quest is to harvest a visual landscape of the soul; to register how a sense of place, a sense of memory and a sense of meaning can override this simple translation of the visual facts. It is a veritas over verisimilitude, truth over description.” (Ref; James Hanley RHA, Aosdana, writing about Sorca’s work in The Irish Arts Review)

Website: www.sorcaofarrell.ie