Mel Kadel’s ink drawings are a joyful and strange enticement, the character of her work often portrayed to be falling through the experiences of life to becoming entangled within it. There’s also a component of surrealism to Kadel’s art, a reflection of the subconscious behind the build-up of thoughts.
In viewing and handling Kadel’s art you feel the craftmanship, the personal touches and the love put into it. The style illustrative and contemporary, with a brilliant dimension of volume that straddles between being two and three dimensional, though of late Kadel has pulled her character off from the paper and taken them into the real world. Placing them in scenes of real life, whether it’s on the sea, in the park, or on the trees and plants – the surroundings interacting with the figure and vice versa.
Kadel’s drawing are usually produced on paper that has an antique, coffee-stained appeal, creating a backdrop that’s both personalised and textural in touch. Also, in using this sepia base the ink drawings are brought forward from the background, the tones of the watercolours and inks separated but working well when placed together. It’s all very harmonic, for the colours of Kadel’s drawings aren’t overwrought, the lines simple and flowing, and so the image has no conflicting focus or dramatic pull for attention, allowing you to look at the overall design and feel yourself slip into its calm consciousness. The messages of Kadel’s drawings covertly working their way into your mind. In recent works however Kadel has expanded to produce murals large enough to immerse the viewer inside. This difference in canvas is not the first time Kadel has explored different surfaces, having transferred her art onto record-covers, packaging, clothing, ceramics, to custom objects such as a chair and table. Her work bounding from the page to different spheres and surfaces, and as such creating new angles and perspectives.
Untitled. Pen and Ink on Hand-Stained Paper. © Mel Kadel.
Within many of Kadel’s images there are delicate strokes of psychedelic art – various in appearance – that produce an oxymoron of being both calm and hallucinatory. The drawings feel like a journey into the mind, and with a touch of the hippy-era – with colourful flowers, dots and geometric patterns. There are also many points to observe in Kadel’s art; from pressures on mental health; gender; to political landscapes as seen in The Wall (2008). This may therefore seem ironic, but Mel Kadel’s art provides on the one hand an escape from reality – with its optimistic viewpoint of bright colours and starry skies – while on the other offers a topsy-turvy glimpse of the world and an introspection that’s there for the taking, if only you look.
The Wall, 2008, Pen and Ink on Hand-Stained Paper. © Mel Kadel.
