Large Portrait drawings in the age of Ai

October 6th – 17th: 11am-3pm

PV – Wednesday 8th October 6 – 9pm. All welcome.

Artist talk and discussion: 11th October 11am-1pm.
Meet the artist: 11th October 1pm-3pm.

BIG HEADS is an exhibition of large drawings using black pan pastel, charcoal and a bevelled sponge on Fabriano paper. The work is inspired by several contexts – drawing as process, physical presence of the work in contrast to digital and virtualenvironments, and image as expressions of selfhood. Having spent many years looking at and creating in the realm of digital culture, these works return to a basic need by Trudy to work on visceral drawings in real time with emotive connection to the sitter of the portrait. Being chosen as the subject for a portrait is an intimate process for both the artist and the subject, and this work hopes to express that.

Consequently, BIG HEADS is about the nature of large portraits and their interaction with the sitter, and also about identity and selfhood in relation to lived experience. Some of the portraits are of people who are literally ‘Heads’ of their field – such as Kate Devlin who is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Society at Kings College London for example. There are a variety of faces in the exhibition that affirm and celebrate notions of selfhood through a visual construction of identity, displaying a narrative of the self.

Particularly in the current age of artificial intelligence, where creative arts are being data scraped and re-defined in the digital realm, and discretely removed from curriculum developments, this exhibition aims to bring personal, physical and intimate context to how we see in contrast to the mirror of the digital screen. The work is also a celebration of simply drawing and engaging with people who are happy to be drawn and to be part of this amazing creative process.