Received: Mailart drawing from Kiera Pannell (UK and Quebec, Canada)

[De Villo Sloan]

August 23, 2010 - Kiera Pannell is producing a series of post-card size drawings at a rate of at least one per day. Many if not all of these concentrate on heads and faces viewed from various perspectives. Perplexed by the identity of these characters I was seeing appear in diverse places, I emailed her and she kindly responded from Prague (she's traveling on vacation): "The image I sent you is one of the only portraits that I drew with no reference point at all." So I'm pleased to have a fairly unique piece from Kiera because it's an imaginary person.

I learned in reading Kiera's emails that her art is very spontaneous, and she often does these drawings while being distracted by other things. Right now she is drawing her way across Europe. Working in shifting environments and situations the mailart she is sending us starts to become a journal of that experience. In comparison, here is another Kiera Pannell mailart drawing of the poet W. H. Auden:

(Kiera Pannell drawing courtesy of Grigori Antonin's excellent blog (http://no-john-rays.blogspot.com/).

Kiera says: "Making these small scale works has allowed me to improve artistically and develop new techniques. The scribbly character developed when I realised that I was never going to get a pristine straight line when drawing on the bus or the train, and I decided to just go with it." The scribbly things are akin to the "automatic" drawing and writing the surrealists were so fond of. I'm taking a close look at those.

Thank you so much Kiera!

You can see more mailart at Kiera's website(http://www.thisisart.ca).

[K Pannell]

Aw, thanks for the write-up! It's really lovely. The W.H. Audin picture was made while sitting in a really, really boring math department meeting. It's funny that you mention distraction, as lately I have been noticing a difference in the quality of my drawing depending on how distracted I am.