Diane Henshaw

Diane Henshaw's main artistic output is drawing expanded across many mediums and formatic constructions. Paired-down abstract works display the history of marks of decisions past, of the time spent, and the material layers used to build up these compositions. The impression is that the drawing process may contain anything, but its success depends upon combining its parts into a cohesive, spontaneous unity. This approach stems from an expanded notion of drawing captured in the Irish word 'dinnseanchas' - the science of place. Dinnseanchas refers to an ancient genre of mythological geography that gave a poetic account of place names. Dinn means the place (an eminent site or locale); sean means old and is associated with the figure of the seanchaí or local storyteller, the keeper of lore and memory. It is this twisting and drawing together of strands of the collective memory of place - a tapestry weaving place and people, memory and experience, history and present desire that Diane explores in her practice. Lines express the spirit of dinnseanchas in a modern idiom, as a cognitive-imaginative mapping of the environment through forms of artistic markmaking and public engagement.

Living in rural Fermanagh and traversing borders regularly to Leitrim, I have become increasingly aware of the shifting patterns of the gargantuan clouds in the sky and how they relate to the environment, anthropological history of the region and its deeply mysterious ecology and the underworld. Described by Aristophanes as patron goddesses of idle men, clouds and their ever-changing patterns have long symbolised the restlessness and unpredictability of humans and nature. These observations have informed a series of new works iterated through various drawing mediums, surfaces and scales that I would be interested in researching as part of my residency. This proposed concept will inform a new body of work that will explore the cultural, historical & scientific contexts of mining and its impacts on our ecology and local culture / community & health. Since aesthetic sensitivities manifest in different ways, I feel that it is necessary to turn to nature relating to how it means to live life collectively in a world that is always more than human.