Marina Renee-Cemmick: 2018 Scholar

  • How did the experience affect you as an individual?

    As a young artist, it gave me the chance to experience the work of previlantly influencial artist, like Michaelangelo, Bellini, and Medardo Rosso first hand and introduced me to many others who I have not encountered before. Today, we have easy access to reproductions of work but to experience works in the original context that they were created is a great privilege. I remember walking into the Medicci Chapel, it was dimly lit and Michelangelo's sculptures emerged out of the darkness, glowing. It felt like a sacred space and such atmosphere can never be captured on camera. This experience focused my attention to the importance the context in which we experience a work of art and left a lasting impression. Having never been to Italy, The John Kinross Award gave me time to fully emerge myself in the culturally rich city with freedom and time to explore. 
  • What was the impact on your practice? In Florence everyday I would take my sketchbooks to different museums and galleries...

    Marina Renee-Cemmick, To me you are Blue, oil on canvas, 182 x 140 cm

    What was the impact on your practice?

    In Florence everyday I would take my sketchbooks to different museums and galleries to drew from sculptures. I brought this practice back with me, teaching a class ‘Drawing from Sculpture’ at the Kelvingrove museum in Glasgow. Now Living in London, I visit the V&A Gallery and draw from the plaster copies. I now have a personals connection with and experience of these influential masterpieces and have a greater appreciation for their place within art history. I am currently working with reference material from sketchbooks that I made while on the scholarship and developing drawings from memories of spaces that I encountered in Florence. 
  • What would you say the long term impact has been on yourself and your work? To find my own personal...

    Marina Renee-Cemmick, If Pleasure Could be Sin, 2018, oil paint on paper, 29.5 x 21 cm. RSA Collection

    What would you say the long term impact has been on yourself and your work?

    To find my own personal relationship with Italian renaissance art, I have taken much inspiration from the unfinished slaves and pieta sculptures by Michelangelo. The experience has given me a visual gallery of references and a new visual language to work from, experienced within their original context. Without this experience I would not have the same connection to this historical period and an understanding of it's influence on contemporary art; looking at artists like Berlinde de Bruyckere, I am thrown back to sitting in the Galleria Dell’Accamedia surrounded by human forms that feel animate and lifelike. The privilege to travel and be exposed to a different country and culture; to experience light and colour differently have all had an effect on me and therefore my art practice

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