Charlie Poulsen’s practice comprises three distinct categories, identified by the artist as drawing, growing sculpture and studio sculpture. At first glance, these different areas of creative process may seem visually disparate, yet on closer observation, a single unifying factor emerges – that of nature. Every aspect of Poulsen’s work is entwined with the natural world whether inspired by, made from, fused to, or growing amidst.
Drawing is the beating heart of Poulsen’s practice. He finds parallels between the ephemeral, evocative and transitory nature of drawing and the way we live our lives. Entitling his drawings by date reveals that drawing is an essential component of his daily life, a visual diary of expression. For Poulsen, drawing offers a direct and immediate means to channel his thoughts, journeying spontaneously through the work to connect and to discover. Beginning with a square, chosen by the artist for its “stability and calmness without the landscape or portrait associations”, the drawings comprise rhythmic freeflowing lines which traverse the paper surface, building to a crescendo of repeated marks in varying directional form. The starting point of the square has become an essential format and a consistent set of parameters. For the artist, it offers an inbuilt structural tension, the square attempting to deny the possibility of creating energies within its form, posing a dynamic challenge in the work. The drawings that evolve are seemingly abstract, realised in layers of pencil, wax and gouache. Coupled with the contemplative sensitivity of his approach, these images are structurally balanced and compositionally harmonious.
For Poulsen, drawing is an active process and his large-scale works (153 x 153 cm) require his full body response in the act of making. The physical energy of his approach relates to the innate energy of his subject. These are drawings without narrative or direct observation, but which are, in fact, inspired by the vitality of life found in the natural world. The animated surface of the drawings reflects the pulsating dynamism of nature. Poulsen looks beyond physical matter to the invisible energies, the internal organic vigour of growth, the forces which drive natural phenomena, the energies within the earth, the basic form of things. He views the drawings as a form of organic geometry. There is a sense of timelessness in Poulsen’s work, the same undercurrent energies running through life and governing our existence, are greater than the depiction of any specific moment.
The unique visual language of Poulsen’s drawing is paralleled in his sculptural practice. The wax sculptures are directly related to his works on paper and conceived by the artist as three-dimensional drawings. The wax is malleable, like the surface of a drawing and allows for other materials to be added including paper, twigs and household rubbish. The wax medium offers a translucent quality giving an impression of looking into, and through, the work as though peering into infinite space.
Poulsen is an artist of great versatility and experimentation with materials. Lead has featured as his companion in sculpture for many years. Early works comprise tools wrapped in lead. Subsequently, sections of tree were sliced, re-assembled and wrapped in the material. He has cast lead into forms pressed in sand, which again he feels relate closely to drawing. Concrete has been used in many previous sculptures, constructed by shaping and moulding the concrete while still in a plastic state. Once more, it is the natural world which is the common factor, motivating the artist and unifying the work.
While Poulsen is not an environmental campaigner, and neither does he class himself specifically as a ‘land artist’, he relates to the history of artists who have worked directly with the natural world, finding affinity in the work of David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy. Trees and organic growth have long provided a source of fascination. He is interested in an art which is incomplete, that will keep changing long after his lifetime to which his ‘growing sculptures’ are testament. Furthermore, he is engaged in the legacy of art, the unknowns of the future for the work both in its physical shape and form, and in how people centuries on may perceive its existence.
From 2018, Poulsen has worked on significant collaborative projects of his ‘growing sculpture’ for Marchmont House in Berwickshire, all of which involve objects and living trees and will develop and change over many years. Skyboat, a large wooden fishing boat of over 11 metres in length is suspended in the air on a frame with underplanting of young oak trees. The intention is that eventually these trees will take the weight of the boat and it will be possible to remove the constructed frame leaving the boat held in the air as though hoisted up from the ground by the branches. However, the specific evolution of the work, though set in situ by the artist, will be controlled by nature – the principal source of inspiration for Poulsen’s work will, in turn, determine the progression of its form. This, for him, keeps the work active and alive. The artist’s control is, to an extent, relinquished and nature, with all its unpredictability and strength, again becomes the dominant force. He can never be sure which direction the works may take and, while they embody a quiet stillness, they are never completely motionless. This meditative calm and stability coupled with ceaseless movement and change is a dynamism activated in Poulsen’s work, in both his drawing and sculpture alike.
The relationship between organic form and the rigidity of a static object is a recurring theme in the artist’s practice. In his ‘growing sculpture’, Stone Cracker, a small sapling was planted in the ground then threaded through a hole drilled into a large stone. The artist’s intention is that after over a century or more, the tree will split the stone. However, Poulsen questions whether the tree will indeed break the stone or whether the stone will keep the tree contained, forcing the tree to flow over the top of the stone in its effort to grow. The tension is there as it is in his drawings between the frame and the marks. In this case, the fate is left entirely to the tree and stone to decide, controlled by nature. It is the power of nature, its silent strength
and beauty that Poulsen’s work reminds us to be conscious of, and respectful towards. These contemporary concerns are fundamentally embedded in the work.
Recent large sculptures installed at Marchmont – Dancing Tree and Mid-Slice offer conversations between nature and the man-made, the actual and the industrial. These works are constructed using a new material for Poulsen – iron. An ash tree was sliced into three and this formed the basis for the two sculptures, cast and reassembled with external flanges and bolts. A tree is, after all, essentially a tubular structure and, in times past, pipes were made from hollowed out tree trunks. Elm trees, for example, had holes bored through them which allowed for the passage of water.
Similarly, Poulsen’s ‘Torus maquette’ echoes this division of constituent parts with half the sculpture formed from a branch of a tree that fell to the ground during Storm Arwen and the other half made from a cast of this branch. The two forms are then connected, creating an erratic ‘Torus’ shaped form and, once again, nature and industrial components are fused. These works reflect a core dialogue in Poulsen’s practice – between the natural world and the man-made. He reminds us that the parallels between the two are often closer than we might think.
Dr Claudia Milburn, August 2023
