Related gallery: colour space – silence, solitude and roses

The inherent sensuousness of drawing is one factor which makes drawing an inherently human behaviour.  Dawn Csutoros produces drawings in pastel which, as products, not only appeal to the visual and tactile senses of spectators, but which in the process of their making, it seems, have served to satisfy the same visual and tactile needs of the artist herself.

These pastel drawings have, literally, been formed by the artist’s hands that is, by the hands in direct contact with the paper.  Dawn Csutoros’ method is to apply a colour with the appropriate pastel and then to rub this layer of colour back into the surface, taking care to produce eveness of surface colour, or subtle gradations of colour as the situation requires.  Then she will apply another colour on top of this layer, rubbing it back in turn.

The layering process will go on and on, several layers being applied.  With each layer, the surfaces realised with the forming image became progressively richer, more translucent, more vibrant.

This physical contact with the surface is guided by a complete mental immersion within the virtual world being formed under the artist’s hand.  As a consequence, Dawn Csutoros produces drawings containing forms which seem simultaneously to materialise and dissolve, space which breathes, vaporous atmospheres, colour which alludes to ritual, light which evokes a sense of revelation, surfaces which seduce.

The drawings do not communicate so much on a conscious level, but touch deep-rooted chords of recognition within our unconsciousness, instilling within us a sense of knowing – of significant knowing at that.  But of what?   There is a spiritual dimension to this work.

As such, the images induce a sense of heightened experience, of experience and sense of meaning beyond the everyday: of aesthetic experience.

Lindsay Broughton 1999

Head of Drawing Department
School of the Arts
University of Tasmania  Hobart   Australia