A Study of Dance, Karolina Szymkiewicz

A Study of Dance

An exhibition of artwork by Karolina Szymkiewicz

Art Library, Leeds Central Library

2^nd-30^th August 2012

Karolina graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2011 with a Masters in Illustration.  She has moved to Leeds and is working freelance.  Her favourite medium of expression is drawing, mostly in pencil.  She is particularly inspired by the movement of the body and her Masters year was spent looking at dance and capturing movement.

For me this was a revelation.  I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at pencil drawings before.  The hair flowed and the limbs were captured mid movement. The picture shows how dynamic the drawings are.  I love the transparency of the fabric.

It was hard for me to believe the lines were just pencil.  It made my current “Making Marks” section of my course very meaningful.

I have been looking at shading with pencil so this is what I concentrated on.  Shape was defined by shading, the contours of the body so clearly shown but there appeared to be no actual outline drawing.  This may well be a naive thing to notice but it impressed me nevertheless.

The shading was usually made with what looked like fast, linear marks.  In fact the dates of all of the pictures were recent so they must have been done quite quickly.  The hair was drawn with long, sinuous lines that varied in intensity from fine, delicate strokes to intense, bold ones.  The whole effect was to create a rhythm that strengthened the movement of the body.  In the picture above this is further heightened by the flow of the fabric.

In a jokey comment my husband said “It’s just marks on paper” and the thing is he was so right.  But there is a world of difference between my marks and Karolina’s.

The effect of these pictures on me is very marked.  First, I love dance.  I find it exciting and exhilarating and the same emotions are there when I look at this work.  Second, it is inspirational from the point of view of my course.  Whilst I’m pretty sure I’ll not be able to produce work of such a standard it is worth considering that even Karolina started somewhere.  I hope she has a successful future ahead of her; she’s very young.