Ahead of her exhibitions in Ireland and Italy, Grace Weir speaks with Rachel Thomas
Rachel Thomas: Throughout your career, your artwork has been equally involved with the media of photography, filmmaking, painting, drawing and performance lectures. Underpinning this cross-disciplinary approach is a meticulous focus on a subject. You mentioned your childhood memory of drawing with your father and his response on how to focus on a subject. Is this what shaped your practice and view of the world as an artist?
Grace Weir: One of my earliest memories, when I was about seven, was with my father, who made me draw a bunch of daffodils in a vase, using just one line to draw all around the outline of the shape. I didn’t see the point of this exercise and I remember drawing this squiggly line all around until I connected with the beginning point. Suddenly, in this small, odd, linear form, the whole complexity of the flowers in the vase jumped out at me. It stunned me because I could see so clearly not just the daffodils, but also the whole room beyond in the negative space of the shape. I think this was my introduction to abstraction and how the world could be understood and articulated with the simplicity of a line. I am still thinking about lines.
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