Heather hansen

Discovering the work of Heather Hansen has helped me understand the feeling of seeing the energy released into the charcoal marks I have been creating. She explored the combined art of painting and movement for one of her experimental projects titled Emptied Gestures, where the artist uses her own body to illustrate action on a two-dimensional surface in a kinetic performance piece. She contorts her body in fluid motions with her extended limbs trailing two pieces of charcoal that track their own movement onto the large surface of paper beneath her to create symmetrical patterns reminiscent of the Rorschach test. Her captivating performances involve dance-like movements that are just as much the main focus as the final drawings. These movements are captured by a photographer to document the progression in the piece, step by step, as static images encapsulating the energy exerted into each mark. In 2013, Hansen says, “In this series, I am searching for ways to download my movement directly onto paper, emptying gestures from one form to another and creating something new in the process.”

Hansen quotes Joseph Campbell as part of her inspiration behind her work: “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe. To match your nature with Nature.” Watching her process is a mesmerizing experience where lines emerge from her many natural, physical gestures. Without hesitation, she repeats her movements and smears the lines together resulting with a permanent recording of her physical movements into the final, unpredictable works. She then lifts her body off of the page to reveal the one-of-a-kind pieces. Part dance and part performance art, the kinetic drawings are a way for Hansen to merge her love for visual art and dance into a unified artform. I realise now that I have not yet experimented with someone photographing me while I am performing to document my line dances as I construct them on the page. I am working on constructing a contraption that I can wear on my feet that will hold a stick of charcoal in place without me having to point my foot to create a mark. I believe the continuous tracing in Hansen's pieces generates energy through movement by looping across the white paper and holding it within the charcoal marks.

http://www.heatherhansen.net/film