Title: Inflame
Medium: Mixed Media on Cotton Paper
Dated:: 2008 – 2009
Unframed: 116cm x 156cm
Framed: 151cm x 190cm
Bell’s artmaking is a spiritual practice and she often references museum objects from the ancient civilisations of Africa, Babylonia and Egypt. This is clearly visible in the mixed media artwork titled, Inflame, that was exhibited as part of an exhibition, Alchemy, at David Krut in 2010. Lucia Boshoff (2015:1) explained, that according to Bell, “each work is a self-portrait. She is the archaic lion, the winged victor, both the Infanta Margaret Theresa and the high-heeled figure crouching in the shadows. She finds the ‘I’, within the ‘others’, the ‘others’ within the self.”
Similarly, through her medium she also transcends traditional boundaries through her multimedia approach to artmaking. She sculpts as if painting – coiling the clay without armature, working from the bottom up, the inside out. She embraces the sculptural and responsive qualities of drawing on lithographic stone and the spontaneity of painting gold leaf on Chinese paper. In Bell’s (Boshoff 2015:1) own words she explains her process as a“push and pull of surrender and will, the dance of finding beautiful form.”
