Amanda Robins, Vessel II (Heart), 2003, 115 x 178 cm
pencil on Arches watercolour paper
Australian art critic and author Robert Hughes has died in New York after a long struggle with worsening health problems.
I wish to honor him for all the well-known contributions he has made to our culture, including the controversial ones, and also for his insight that “we have had a gutful of fast art and food”.
Without being remotely aware of it, he was part of the team of thinkers firing my motivation to compile the awakened eye website. He features on the slow art page, which is a celebration of the treasure of a book “Slow Art: Meditative Process in Painting and Drawing”, written by Australian artist Amanda Robins. It seems fitting to accompany this post with one of her exquisite drawings.
The camera, if it’s lucky, may tell a different truth to drawing – but not a truer one. Drawing brings us into a different, a deeper and more fully experienced relation to the object. A good drawing says: “not so fast, buster”. We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food.
What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness makes you think and feel; art that isn’t merely sensational, that doesn’t get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn’t falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures.
Robert Hughes in The Guardian, 2004
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Amanda Robins’ website
Robins at the awakened eye
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That quote was the foundation for my blog, Slow Muse, 6 years ago. RIP, Robert, you were a complex, compelling, provocative presence.
D – My skin wears goosebumps reading your comment. We have lost our mutual mentor, but not the inspiration he gifted … thank you and love to you. L