Doris Rohr

Artist statement

My research is located in the practices of drawing and related paper based practices, and is concerned with observation, natural form and the tension between man-made and natural, the slippage between culture and nature.

Currently I am working on a series of drawings of plants (Cactus, Pitcher, Savoy etc), with the intention of adding other organisms or forms of life. I am interested in botanical drawing, historically and how this might become a genre of contemporary relevance and status within fine art practices. Ambiguity and projection, as well as anthropomorphic aspects, form part of the intentions behind my most recent ongoing project: multiple installation drawings of specially adapted plants with a visually hybrid form (Cacticomposite - ongoing 2013 ongoing). This most recent work connects with still life and botanical observation from an earlier period of my life. I am interested in re-learning the language of close detailed observation. I have included earlier examples of still life to explain the relationship between current work and that of my past.

Weather Drawings (2009) form a body of work which started with observations of the sky from an upstairs window. These daily records formed the research background to a body of exhibition drawings and a series of etchings. In some ways they form a link between botanical drawing and the genre landscape, as both are based on a quasi-scientific recording system, but without the intention to create objective data as a result. Neither do I intend to develop objective visual data with the botanical work.

Much of my landscape drawing is concerned with memory, sense of place and situations of redundancy. Landscapes industrial, urban, post industrial, rural and remote, are recorded through drawing and photo based media. Mostly I work from observation with a sketchbook and sometimes with the camera. The series of works  about Belfast Docks and the North of Scotland (Dounreay) pay homage to the significance of a site to local collective memory, yet allows for a subjective and metaphorical reading as transient and evocative of loss. The research project NORTH was funded by the Vikky Oppenheimer-Blum Travel Bursary (1999/2000). It enabled me to base drawings, writings and photos on site visits to the North of Scotland. The publication NORTH (2005, Cumbria Institute of the Arts) documents some of the findings. More recently two installation drawings of enormous proportions dealt with the tensions of romanticism and contemporary agri and horticulture in rural Britain. Hortus and Nursery were both installed and exhibited at Leitrim Scultpure Centre in 2012.