Debora Alanna - Drawings from 2011-2012: pen on paper

DEBORA ALANNA

DRAWINGby Debora Alanna2011 – 2012Pen on Paper

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Angel in my hair

Life showed me how it was possible to survive in spite of adversity.

This selection from a body of work created in 2011-2012 while healing from some affecting emotional clouts, my testament to endurance and insight through an aspect of my personality I call perspicacity.

© Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper ~ 2011-2013

©Debora Alanna

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A night walk

When shadows animate, when silhouette become thicker than arms and legs, when dusky spectres become stauncher than one’s torso, when street light glows are eyes to an otherness that is unavailable in daylight, I walked in the night, a shadow of being.


©Debora Alanna

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Process

Working with a 9 x 11” sketchbook and fine tipped Bic pens, I made a drawing every couple of days

for a year. This collection is a selection of over 300 drawings made

during this time. © Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper ~2011-2013

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Holding up the world


©Debora Alanna

Sensations of an urge to uplift, support human concerns is translated to personified trees.

My process of working through adversity felt like I was all the trees holding up the world.

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GrowthDeveloping the

idea of transmutation, appendages formed roots.

Growth is the pervasive synergy possible when the land and people connect.

Growth of my positivity meant everything I did had the potential to take root – a process of rejuvenation.


©Debora Alanna

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Maybe, drawings for sculptureSeveral drawings entailed ideas for sculpture.

© Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper~2011-2013

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3 TowersWorking with sculptural ideas

(ideally for future projects) emerged as a persistent force throughout the drawings.

3 Towers shows (imagined) split triangulation – divided forms . Each triangular form relates to the other and the smaller truncated figurative formations below.

Repeated forms are unique in their configuration, but similar in their stance . This drawing is about a sculptural maximization and minimization of relationships.


©Debora Alanna

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FlowAnother sculptural

idea is presented in Flow.

This drawing is about consequence s of attempting to move through restrictions. Here, a single self imposed restriction impairs course, life current, curbs the flow of ideas, of actions – constrains living.


©Debora Alanna

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Space between

Space between delineates a space between objects as a fuzzy diagonal line separating two textured spheres. Space between objects or entities is a palpable space. Here, the demarcation is a tether and a division.


©Debora Alanna

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BalanceA state of equilibrium is a

precarious poise above a weighty mass in Balance. Stability and a counteracting influence holds the upper forms’ balancing posture. Stillness is required.

This work is an imagined sculpture.


©Debora Alanna

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PillarsFive wavy squared

columns form a boundary marker. Integral are central organic formations that are outcrops of the stakes.

Pillars is a sculptural idea where a boundary is imagined and the extenuating protuberance challenges the wily assumption of an upright , although questionable existence the wonky phalanges articulate.


©Debora Alanna

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Stretch

An elongation, an extension of leggy appendages below the elevated circular mounds presents the humour of an awkward outlook.

When drawing out or up, a tautness, a strain occurs during the act of a spirited uplifting. During the tension to ascertain a rising view point, there is feeling of a stretch. This strain is best understood as humorous, even if the dissention is desirous.


©Debora Alanna

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Instrumental thoughts

During this period, an absence from playing an instrument resulted in music reflection.

© Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper ~2011-2013

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PianoPurveyors of sound, i.e.

musicians have the ability to draw out music from instruments. Here, the musician enlivens a piano. The pianist is an extension of the keys.

Keyboards have been my longstanding instrument. I imagined myself playing while making this drawing.


©Debora Alanna

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Cello‘There are limits to how much

sound a cello can make. That's part of the framing of acoustical instruments. Finding what those limits might be, and then trying to suggest perhaps even the illusion of going beyond is part of that kind of effort.’~ Yo-Yo Ma

Cello is an investigation of limits and an semblance of sentience , the feeling of being awake to sound possibilities that may translate to music.


©Debora Alanna

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Horn(s)Horn(s) is about the projection of

alternatives and their instrumentation, co-existence.

The significant, larger central horn shape is the core of a ribbed formation, the substantial horn, the head. Its emphasis diminishes the receding horns that become appendages or accessories to the central assertion.


©Debora Alanna

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An inspiration for the floral thoughts as drawings...


“And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd- Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd All other loveliness:- its honied dew (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven, And fell on gardens of the unforgiven In Trebizond- and on a sunny flower So like its own above that, to this hour, It still remaineth, torturing the bee With madness, and unwonted reverie: In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf And blossom of the fairy plant in grief Disconsolate linger- grief that hangs her head, Repenting follies that full long have Red, Heaving her white breast to the balmy air, Like guilty beauty, chasten'd and more fair”

~ Edgar Allen Poe. from: Al Aaraaf Part 1.

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Floral thoughts

Several works suggested flowers, botany, without any species specifically reproduced. All flowers were imagined.


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Trio"The flower is the poetry of reproductio

n. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.

" ~ Jean Giraudoux ,TheEnchanted.

Trio is a composition of three similar but altered buds that project, generate a poetic dissonance triggering confluence.


©Debora Alanna

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TogetherHeads heavy, this floral

embodiment depends on the stems of each to support the whole.

Existence without the aid of others is futile.

Munificence is achieved when the weight of blooming is fortified by togetherness.


©Debora Alanna

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Flowering


Flowering on , nevertheless, an occupant of gardens within idiocy’s hedges. singular reverie poisons the exquisite. Disconsolate, repenting follies, here a flower grows guilty of its splendour.

This is a self portrait.

©Debora Alanna

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FloatiesMost plants germinate from

seeds. Some seeds are transported by wind. This work alludes to these sowing events, but the work is not about seed propagation.

Floaties is optimism, the care free germs of inspiration as they flit and flutter before germinating into thought.


©Debora Alanna

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DancersDancers are child-like floral

manifestations, a trio of innocents gathered on a planetary orb. They are larger than their sphere. Elongated petals point to an zenith, a serious attempt to reach beyond the known realm.

One dancer is more comfortable reaching, does not stretch too much and is stable. Two want to reach farther and sway, falter in their extension.

All remain planted, their stems grounded Supple and quirky, Dancers dance aspiration.


©Debora Alanna

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InceptionThe beginning of more, of

changes because a beginning has begun initiates events that lead to consequence. Inception is the beginning of corollary.

Tendrils from the upper curved mass have found their way into the lower sphere. The otherwise segregated parts seem fitted to each other, connected by fragile communication. Parts correspond via the root augmentation.

Rooting will be the source of new development.


©Debora Alanna

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Landscapes

Landscape whimsy and surreality allows temporary displacement from reality.

© Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper~2011-2013

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VolcanoVolcano is a

projection to the future. Before travelling and working in Iceland in 2013 was a thought, this drawing emerged as augur.

This work articulates the surface of an aftermath.


©Debora Alanna

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HatA fantasy landscape

with a hovering hat, its wide brim and shaped crown decorated with a bow is a secret existence in the midst of a get-together, an assignation, where the others are pond dwellers, their heads the ephemeral clouds.


©Debora Alanna

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On the other side

Temporal anomaly, where segregation is located in the incongruity of spirit, the variance of otherness.

Landscape is sequestered and seized with resounding delineation by echoes of enchanting reverberation.

On the other side is a provocation of strangers, strangeness, the oddness of difference and how distinction is normalcy.


©Debora Alanna

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EmergentMicrocosmic landscapes exist in

one’s sense of place. There are senses enough to forge for minutiae, connectivity appearing, transpiring as projections between what is known and what is unknown.

Emergent is the scope of investigation where feeling, sensation interact with the presence in place, a landscape of conflict, a collision of predisposition and interrogation wielding spears of questioning from a vortex of consternation into a boil of possibilities.


©Debora Alanna

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Under the blanket

Childlike fantasy as landscape is the subject of Under the Blanket. Sometimes, hiding under the covers is not a solution to take cover from problems. The terrible dwell in the hiding. Suppression withholds the substantial.


©Debora Alanna

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Everything else is winter


This work was the title piece for my 2012 exhibition titled Everything else is winter at xChanges gallery in Victoria. All the drawings in this collection were shown with other works (paintings) that I will discuss in another presentation.

This work is about the loneliness of a wintery interlude, the diminishment of spirit during a recuperation period in my life.

Life has all kinds of seasons. This winter tide allowed a transformative outlook – thus the title.

©Debora Alanna

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Dancing trees

“I am not a tree with my root in the soilSucking up minerals and motherly loveSo that each March I may gleam into leaf...” ~

I Am Vertical, 28 March 1961 ― Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems

“Just at present you only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.” ― G.K. Chesterton

Dancing trees is the release from the confines of discount, ambulatory plodding becoming dance and delight as it leaves restrictions of probability.


©Debora Alanna

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Waterscapes

Water is a mystical force allowing dramatic alteration, the power to revise, adjust, move. Water is numinous catalyst . Water is a symbol and expression of the constancy of change.


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Flotsam & Jetsam

Scattered throughout a disturbance in the midst of what is washed ashore, usually debris after storms where remains of wreckage churn in spiraling whirls, a volution of concentricity becomes bubbles rising to the surface.

Flotsam & Jetsam is the transformation from wreckage fragments to hope ascending.


©Debora Alanna

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Drowning

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

~ Herman Melville, Pierre or the Ambiguities

This work is about what could of been but for self preservation.


©Debora Alanna

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Sprouting the fiery

“Never let go of that fiery sadness

called desire.”~ Patty Smith

Contained and shielded, the fiery waters sprout in a fountain of lazy tendrils out of a small orifice. Desire is enclosed in a trapezoid tub, the shield an uneven constitution.

Enthusiasm is restricted by the housing device, a shelter of accommodation. Sprouting the fiery is about the impairment of desires’ bluster and intrinsic sadness that has been supplanted by melancholy.


©Debora Alanna

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Pond‘The Road to Oz’, Frank

L. Baum. Ch 7. The Shaggy Man’s Transformation:

Baum describes how the Shaggy Man did not like a head the Donkey King gave him: “"My magic works only one way. I can DO things, but I can't UNdo them. You'll have to find the Truth Pond, and bathe in its water, in order to get back your own head.

This work is a reference to Baum’s ‘Truth Pond’, where transformation is possible.


©Debora Alanna

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Figuration


Some works with figurative involvement.

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Metamorphosis

“During that period I used to marvel at my own metamorphosis. At times it seemed impossible, either that I had ever lived a placid, peaceful life ... (or) that I had become ... inured to scenes of violence and death. One or the other could not be. One was real, the other was a dream, but which was which?~ The Iron Heel. Ch

XIX. by Jack London. This work is about the experience and assessment of change.


©Debora Alanna

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Facing the self

“The third eye (also known as the inner eye) is a mystical and esoteric concept referring to a speculative invisible eye which provides perception beyond ordinary sight. (...)

In certain dharmic spiritual traditions such as Hinduism, the third eye refers to the ajna, or brow, chakra. The third eye refers to the gate that leads to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness.”

~Richard Cavendish, ed. (1994). Man, Myth and Magic .Volume 19. New York, NY: Marshall Cavendish. p. 2606.

Facing the self encompasses the ‘third eye’ sensibility. Also, it is a portrait of the duality, the acceptance of the Jungian anima/animus within.


©Debora Alanna

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SplitThe even tone has two variations

differing from each other only in pitch; the oblique tone has three variations, known as "Rising, Sinking, and Entering.”

~ L. Cramner-Byng. A Lute of Jade. Chinese Verse Form.

Rending space and figure, both flat, Split is a cessation of inference in its stylization, a separation of parts in a mirrored division.

This work shows the diagonal as a transverse cut where the oblique allows new considerations of space and time.


©Debora Alanna

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The necklaceAn arrangement of pyramidal

shapes become a system of expanding structures echoed by like, reversed images divided from the sun face by an undulating ribbon. The sun, ribbon and pyramids with shadowy polygonal reversals are suspended without reference to ground.

The quintet of jet shapes under band becomes a uncommitted necklace in its proximity to / detached from the weary sad sun.

Jewel like, the collection of pointed shapes is the characteristics of severe perfection, the separation, a rejection of that rigour. The sun is the face of consternation with the knowledge of its incapacitation with paragon.


©Debora Alanna

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The doorWilliam Blake, Aldous

Huxley and others wrote about the ‘doors of perception’.

Both of the above authors’ writings explain the need and positive outcomes that result when one gets out of one’s own way.

This work shows a door to perception open and the self and its sceptre descending the staircase to the depths of poetic space, the place where the unknown dwells.


©Debora Alanna

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Flying afootAfoot, flying into the

unidentified mystery of existence, a winged humanoid foot is splayed to grip air in its airborne pose. Wings are leaf-like, growths as wings alluding to how humans grow when soaring above expectations.


© Debora Alanna

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Onslaught

Onslaught is the offensive, the defense against a cascading deluge of spherical turbulence. Provoking and impertinent spheres tumble behind the above and to the rear of the figure bracing his shields in futility.

A phantom crowd, others (otherness) is entangled in the surge originating from an upright book shape. The spheres are a discharge of ideas.


©Debora Alanna

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LoadBalanced on a curvy

walking stick that extends beyond the picture plane, an appendage, the figure is bent over with their encumbrance. The other limb stretches to steady, too.

Part of the figure’s rear, an obdurate consignment is the hard edged box – containment.

Subjugation is the result of carrying the burden of the figure’s self regard.

© Debora Alanna ~ Drawing Pen on Paper - 2011-2013

©Debora Alanna

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Gibbous


©Debora Alanna

A waxing and waning during a fulsome moon talk is incongruity and wounding in its loveliness.

Through a replete look, indulgence contrasts insight with distrust.

Convex and concave phases simultaneous tests essence within an oscillating existence.

Poetic thought flows and glows, despairs as an astute and cautious creature.

Reflection and redirection bulges against a spine of longing.

©Debora Alanna

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PeekLook, quick! A surreptitious peer, an intent

gaze emerges from a sculptural form. Peek is the wily unforthcoming,

reticent view of work looking back at the maker.


©Debora Alanna

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Shield

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

~ Oscar Wilde, 'The Critic as Artist'.

Art is the shield. The shield is the artist. The shielding may confound the being, but the all-seeing shield is mighty.


©Debora Alanna

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Thank you!This body of work is

dedicated to those that act with compassion and kindness.

Your altruist acts mean more than you can know.

Special thanks to Michael Lewis for his encouragement

and insight.

Thank you for viewing my work.

Debora Alanna© Debora Alanna - Drawing Pen on Paper ~ 2011-2013

Debora Alanna - Drawings from 2011-2012: pen on paper

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