Drawing in My Practice: Isabel Nolan

Drawing enters an artist's practice in many different ways. Approaches can be expressive, conceptual, experimental, and technical. They can result in an artwork, or as research and planning that leads to an artwork. There is a vitality to contemporary drawing, which seems to have become more visible over recent years, as both a component within an artist's practice and as a powerful discipline in its own right.

Listen and view our studio artists speak about drawing as it relates to their practice, by sharing selected works. This is an opportunity to reflect on drawing as a medium, or to make your own drawings responding to suggestions and tips from each artist.

Each episode can be experienced in your own time and in your own way, alone or in a group, allowing for further conversation on drawing to unfold. You can respond to the suggestions in a way that suits you and your current situation.

Isabel Nolan has an expansive practice that incorporates sculptures, paintings, textile works, photographs, writing and works on paper. Her subject matter is similarly comprehensive, drawing on a wide range of sources from cosmological phenomena, religious reliquaries, Greco-Roman sculptures and literary/historical and philosophical figures, examining the behaviour of humans and animals alike.

Her recent solo exhibitions include, The air between things, Stephen McKenna & Isabel Nolan, China OCT Boxes Art Museum, Shunde District, Guangzhou, China (2019); Ein Fuß in der Welt / One foot in the world, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Germany, (2018); Another View from Nowhen, London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, (2017–18). She is represented by the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin.

For the very first time in 2020, National Drawing Day is taking place in people’s homes, asking the public to ‘Go big and stay home’. An initiative of the National Gallery of Ireland, supported by the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, National Drawing Day encourages people to get drawing on Saturday 16 May 2020.

#NationalDrawingDay