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| Vija Celmins, Night Sky 3, 2002. Aquatint and drypoint on paper, 37.2 x 47.1 cm |
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| Vija Celmins, Star Field III, 1982-3. Graphite on acrylic ground on paper, 53.3 x 68.6 cm. |
SIMON GRANT: It's definitely a different feeling. You get a very good sense of intimacy with the desert and ocean works. The galaxy works are more intensely made.
VIJA CELMINS: The material, charcoal and pencil and paper are bigger players in the night sky pieces. The work is much more abstract, and even though your mind says this is a deeper space, I think the uniform nature of the graphite sitting on that surface keeps you engaged in the flat plane. There really is no depth to it.
SIMON GRANT: How are the pencil marks actually made?
VIJA CELMINS: The graphite is just laid on bit by bit, as dense as it can go. The white spaces - the stars -are patches of the paper that have been left blank; I have drawn around them.
SIMON GRANT: Some of the pencil marks are so thickly laid on, it almost looks like paint.
VIJA CELMINS: Yes. Star Field III (1983) took about a year to do. This is a terrific drawing, though I thought I would go crazy if I did another. I did do three, then I stopped drawing totally. As you can tell, even though I try to keep my brain out of things, I'm always beating up the work with a relentless criticising of it. I went back to painting, and did a series of paintings that looked very much like this drawing - dense, layered, very physical. I used to say they looked like a rubber tyre or Formica, they're so closed off and over-finished. I didn't get back to drawing for about ten years, until around 1994.
