Sigrid Holmwood’s arbourous idylls evoke an Arcadian state of consciousness, a Huxlian island of eternal pleasure and contentment, sunlit and saccharin. But, is there not something of the sicklyness of decadence here to, the scent of the corpse from Boecklin’s Isle of the Dead? To the sweet and singular line of the pen has been added the emotional and associational timbre of colour. Here is where the fine line is drawn between drawing and painting: drawing needs nothing but itself to be itself, the naked art.

Richard Dyer © 2005 extract from his essay 'The Naked Art'

Richard Dyer is News Editor and London Correspondent for Contemporary magazine; Assistant Editor at Third Text; and Managing Editor of Wasafiri.

Sigrid Holmwood was educated at the Ruskin School of drawing and fine art, Oxford, and the Royal College of Art, London.

Recent exhibitions include 'The Spiral of Time', OHOS, Reading; 'Pocket-Scopic', Sartorial Contemporary Art, London; 'If you go down to the woods today', Rockwell, London; 'La Pittura Sale Sugli Alberi', 42Contemporaneo,Modena, Italy; and Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2003.

She was awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship at the British School at Rome 2003-2004