New Challenges — Diane Griffin Sculpture

These are what keeps life spicy, right? Trying new things and stepping out of our comfort zones. Well, to spice things up a bit, I have set myself a new challenge in the way that I approach my next project. I decided that I wanted to be more experimental with the clay and just see where it leads me. During the project I hope to embrace some more abstract forms and create sculptures that are less representational, more visceral. Exciting and scary, but hey, what’s the worse that can happen?…..it all goes wrong and I hate what I make? Even if that does happen, I will have learned something, I can’t not. I’ll have tried new things and that in itself will help me develop as an artist, so definitely worth doing.

The project ‘Beneath the Skin’ is a development of my “Points of Unity’ sculptures which investigated cathartic rituals as a release for emotions. Inspired by cultural customs of emotional expression at historical sites where people congregate to leave offerings or messages, Points of Unity sculptures are focussed on the ritual act rather than specific emotions. Beneath the Skin will focus on the emotions themselves.

This idea is for a new body of work that investigates the essence of what it is to be human through sculptural manifestations of our emotions. The concept explores human feelings of fear, anxiety, overwhelm, love etc and will result in a series of dynamic ceramic sculptures that represent these powerful driving energies. Although we are all shaped and guided by our emotions, they are often very difficult to express and sometimes even to identify. For a more detailed exploration into this topic I will address questions relating to the form, colour and texture of our unseen internal experiences. What does anxiety look like? What colour is fear? Does love look the same for everybody?

All emotions are nuanced and not necessarily singular. Love contains secondary elements of anxiety or fear. For example, the parental love for a child is a wonderful joyous feeling but with it is carried an undercurrent of anxiety about their safety, wellbeing or happiness. A sculpture exploring fear would centre the ‘fear’ as the dominant form but with references of other underlying emotions also being present with smaller forms, textures or colours.

I will be sharing all the developments, struggles, failures and triumphs on my sculptures Instagram page - @dianegriffinart if you’d like to follow along and join in the conversation. I will also do regular updates here on the blog (monthly?) so please add to the comments with your thoughts as we go and check back for the next instalment.

As you can see from the image above, I have started sketching out initial ideas/feelings but the exciting thing is that I don’t actually know what the work will look like in the end. This is just the beginning.