UK artist Olivia Kemp creates stunning, highly detailed, landscapes in black and white, working predominantly in pen. Her creative process includes no prior sketching, pushing her way through each piece, section by section.
“I draw in order to make sense of landscape but also to construct and remodel it,” reads Kemp’s bio. “IĀ build worlds and imaginary places that grow out of a need to interpret the sitesĀ that I have known, expanding and developing them across a page. This encompassesĀ everything, from the visions of a grand landscape right down to the details of the land, the plants, and creatures that may inhabit it.”
In an interview with MoMa she explained that focusing on a small section each time allows her to explore the tiny, minute relationships between the different objects that make up her composition.”I donāt worry about the whole,” she says. “I think it stops the size of the paper from overwhelming me. But mainly I do it because in the past, when Iāve sketched the whole image out beforehand, filling it in bores me. It feels like paint by numbers, like the whole drawing is a foregone conclusion and the excitement of the unknown is lost. Thatās also what is great about pen, youāre always on the edge of making an irrevocable mistake. It sharpens my focus and gets me absorbed in what Iām doing.”
Indeed, in a documented timelapse of her work, she seems very much focused on her work, oblivious to the world around her. “Youāre always trying to get into that mood where youāre not thinking about anything other than what youāre drawing, when hours just escape,” she says. “Thatās whatās addictive.”
Her work might just be that meditative space you’ve been searching for.
