Bosch’s Sister

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Diana Thorneycroft, “Tongue Exchange,” 2018

colour pencil crayon on paper, 11” x 10"

The ghoulish humanoid figures in Diana Thorneycroft’s latest surreal drawings are misshapen, with long tongues and other strange protuberances. Some of the images are sexually charged, but in a dark, mischievous way.

The Winnipeg artist has difficulty herself understanding the drawings, now on view at Regina’s Slate Gallery. “I don’t know what the work is about,” she says. Well, at least, not consciously. “My subconscious is much more clever than my conscious.”

Still, the drawings in Slate’s group show, Summer Rhubarb, on view until Aug. 25, seem a natural evolution from her earlier work.

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Diana Thorneycroft, "Takashi’s Yellow Shoes," 2017

colour pencil crayon and felt marker on paper, 12” x 9”

Go back two decades to Thorneycroft’s theatrical photo series, The Body, Its Lesson and Camouflage, in which the artist’s nude body was attached to hoses, sex toys and other gadgets to create images that were erotically charged but drenched in pain and anxiety. The work refers to a long childhood illness in which the young Diana was hooked up to hospital machines to keep her alive.

Then, five years ago, Thorneycroft started mutilating small plastic horse toys, fitting them with prosthetic limbs and huge tongues or impaling them with clusters of small nails. The work came after a visit to China, where Thorneycroft saw many people with disabilities.

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Diana Thorneycroft, “Tin Drum,” 2018

colour pencil crayon on paper, 12” x 9”

Her installations and photo-based work of the mutilated horses have become increasingly elaborate. The most recent solo show, Black Forest (Dark Waters), is running at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon until Aug. 24.

The figures in the Regina drawings are the humanoid cousins of the Brandon horses. They all owe much to the influence of Hieronymus Bosch: “He’s my bro,” says Thorneycroft.

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Diana Thorneycroft, “Woman with Nosebleed,” 2017

colour pencil crayon on paper, 14” x 11”

In previous bodies of work, every detail of photographs, sculptures or installations was carefully planned. Not so the drawings, where human-like creatures connect in macabre ways with one another and, sometimes, with animals.

“These new drawings were done intuitively,” Thorneycroft writes in her artist’s statement. “Anything and everything was allowed. I did not censor the content, nor question what the hell I was doing, nor ask myself why there were so many tails, tongues and other protrusions. They are what they are.”

Her drawings at Slate are being exhibited with a Who’s Who of mainly Saskatchewan artists, including Joe Fafard, David Thauberger and Zachari Logan. ■

Summer Rhubarb is on view at the Slate Gallery in Regina from June 21 to Aug. 25, 2018.