Cynthia Webb

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Profile and Statement (ca. 2000)

I have been drawing since I was a child. I was born in New Zealand and came to live in Australia at the age of twenty-one. Portraits have always been my fascination. There were no other artists in the family, and no particular interest, encouragement or enthusiasm for the value of such a talent came from my parents. The elusive art of capturing the spirit of the person as it shows through the human face was a fascinating challenge and is still endlessly interesting for me. I am grateful that I was blessed with the “awakened eye” and the ability to sketch and paint the people and things I see around me. This compulsion to practice helped me develop my technique and understanding with the aid of various books and short courses, and by looking at the work of other artists.

For me, drawing is a way of deeply seeing. It is my way of relating to everything in life. Even when I am not actually drawing, I am always processing experience through the artistic sensibility. To see the beauty of the line, the texture, the light, the form and to sit absorbed in drawing is like a kind of meditation. All else falls away. It brings a deeper understanding and clarity to those moments of one's life. Through the act of drawing, one sees and knows more profoundly.

During the years of marriage and bringing up two children, I tried desperately to keep up my art practice. There were times when it was not possible, but then during the eighties with the children in high school, I at last found time to develop a small business working with fabric painting and also doing portraiture. The fabric painting enterprise took a turn into my becoming a teacher of the technique and this soon led into teaching drawing and painting to adult beginners. I very much enjoyed helping people discover that they too have “an artist within”. For many of them it was a revelation, and they claimed it changed their lives.

My travel sketchbooks represent nineteen years of contact with Indonesia and it's wonderful people who are my favourite subjects for drawing. This is because of their patience and a certain “stillness” to sit so willingly and allow my eyes and my pencil to explore their faces. Many Westerners cannot endure this kind of scrutiny. I have met many wonderful people in Indonesia, because of the initial connection made between us by their interest in art and the process of drawing. Some of my models and many of my friends are also artists and have contributed drawings to my sketchbooks, which are precious momentos.

Being in Indonesia, seems to bring out my creative inspiration and this has led on to also expressing myself through “cultural journalism”. Another of my passionate interests is the study and collecting of Indonesia's traditional textiles.

Indonesia is an artistically rich country and it is a joy to be in a place where so much respect and value is placed upon art in all it's many expressions. Yogyakarta in particular, offers this. The artist in me feels very much at home there, in a place that feels as I do about art, among the open-hearted and gentle people who welcome me so sincerely. Terima kasih to all my wonderful friends everywhere in Indonesia who have shared their world with me.  

Cynthia Webb