From Nickola Pottinger’s Artist Statement:
“I make drawings that trigger a conversation between slow meticulous marks and quick, bold physical gestures. I use traditional materials such as Japanese Sumi ink on paper along with eggs, tea, and play dough. A part of my process is to make layers from the build up of marks, transparent use of color, tearing, gluing, and erasures. This combination produces the effect of forms and spaces which resist and yet, balance each other. When the work is viewed from a distance the drawings resemble maps, biological forms, and fictional landscapes as seen in in image 13, Something like Earth.
Working large scale connects to my background as a dancer. This is subtly reflected in the way the work engages the space and how collectively the drawings move in a space. The opportunity to use my hands as a direct tool and create gestural movements with tangible materials is another connection to my experience in dance. There is tension in the drawings underscored by the fact that they are larger than life size yet depict cellular elements usually seen on a molecular scale. The sprawling quality of the drawings move beyond a framed rectangular or square format. Image 1, Honeycomb is shown in a corner of a room, and the pieces that make it whole allow it to rotate and reside in multiple ways. There is a detail of the right corner edge lifting off the wall, and the edges in this work are very specific and concise.
The surfaces are worked and reworked, as spaces are built and then broken down. Within each maelstrom of repetitive marks, painting, tearing and excavation, I derive in what looks like a loose-jointed patchwork or quilt. The work investigates the multifaceted layers of space and time.”
