Huguette Despault May – What We Experience As Human Beings
A Canadian artist Huguette Despault May has drawn Hawser Series, focusing on sections of a massive rope. She draws in great detail in charcoal, depicting a rope both intact and disintegrating into fibrous tendrils. The drawings are made at the scale of the human body, suggesting human muscle, hair and sinew. These ropes are metaphors for the tension, stress, and entanglements that we experience as human beings. They evoke a sense of the dualities of freedom and bondage, strength and weakness, calm and violence. For the artist, the rope is a subject that is visually and technically attractive, and reminiscent of the human issues which she wants to address in her work. Among the artists who have influenced May, Durer remains an important one, for his mastery of drawing and his approach to nature subjects.
