Head Drawings
1984-1989
Sky Head
1989
48.5 x 39 cm
Oil pastel on paper
Queen Bee
1985
15.5 x 19″
49 x 39 cm
Oil pastel on Whatman paper.
Torn Head
1985
15.5 x 19″
49 x 39 cm
Soft pastel on Whatman paper.
Study for Head
1985
15.5 x 19″
49 x 39 cm
Oil pastel on Whatman paper.
Glass Head
1985
48.8 x 39.2 cm
Pastel on paper
Axe Head
1985
48.8 x 39.2 cm
Pastel on paper
Study for Her Head Is Her House
1984
15.5 x 19″
49 x 39 cm
Oil pastel on Whatman paper.
Prism Head
1985
Pastel on paper
48.5 x 39 cm
Two heads
1985
48.8 x 39.3 cm
Pastel on paper
Prism Head
1984
48.8 x 39.2 cm
Pastel on paper
She
1985
48.5 x 39 cm
Oil pastel on Whatman paper
Spiky Head
1985
48.8 x 39.2 cm
Pastel on Paper
Torn Head
1985
61.4 x 51.2 cm
Soft pastel on Whatman paper
Lijn began a series of studies for heads quite consciously in order to develop and change the way she constructed the head areas of her sculptures.
Lijn wanted to try different forms and the drawings allowed her to experiment more quickly and spontaneously than she would when making sculpture. Torn Head was soft and hollow. She decided to try working with hot blown glass to make these new forms.
To change the head form Lijn made some heads using flat plywood rings, piano wire and beads. This allowed her to play with form more easily than solid glass prisms.
Until 1980, she had always used prisms, primarily tank prisms, as abstracted head forms. The multiple significance of the prism, a tool for vision, not simply in diverse directions but also through light refraction, for vision into matter as distant as far off stars, seemed to her an apt metaphor for the human mind.
