Experimental Drawing from Nature and the Senses with Joanna Kidney

In thinking about our place within the web of life, how can drawing connect us to the land, the elements and the more than human world? This workshop will cultivate nature connection through an embodied and playful exploration. Innovative drawing exercises and mindful awareness practices will bring about a broad discovery of new marks, forms and symbols, expanding, and maybe even, transforming your visual language.

We’ll spend slow time both in and out doors - abstracting from the land and the elements, with the breath, the senses and movement. We’ll work with natural sustainable materials (botanical inks, chalks and charcoals made by Joanna), and homemade drawing tools. This workshop is for those wishing to explore intuitive drawing, deepen their connection with the living world and ecological thinking.

About Joanna Kidney

Joanna Kidney’s studio and facilitation practice explores what it means to belong to the web of life in these times. Emerging from an animist worldview, it explores deep ecology, indigenous knowledge, wonder and care. Throughout an expansion of drawing into paint, space and moving image, the act of making and process are central.

In addition to exhibitions in the USA, UK, France and Germany, Joanna has had Solo Exhibitions in the RHA, Dublin; The LAB, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Uillinn and Galway Arts Centre. She has been awarded a Cooper Foundation Grant (USA); Arts Council of Ireland and Wicklow County Council funding; a Royal Hibernian Academy Studio Award; a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship and a Dublin Institute of Technology Award of Excellence. International residencies include Kiðjaberg, Iceland and Brigham Young University, Utah.

Her practice includes collaborations with visual artists, dance artists and artists collectives. She is an R&F Artist Instructor, teaching Encaustic Painting and Drawing in Ireland and Internationally. Her work is held in Irish and International Public and Private Collections. She was a co-founder of Outpost Artists Studios and co-curates Wicklow Artists Salon with writer Philip St John