Almost two weeks since my last update. In this time I have decided to make my drawings several sizes larger than they currently are (in average paper terms). This is partly due to the fact that I always envisioned them being a much larger scale and operating on the basis that the viewer would be drawn in and then begin to see some of the detail work that is only visible close up. I still hold this to be an attractive proposition and think it is a great way of enjoying a piece of artwork – the element of surprise – of sorts. So my work post degree shrunk to a manageable sketchbook size, I then became lazy – rather life got in the way – same shit, different person story of someone getting caught up in day to day life, and ended in treating drawing as an escape and not a serious artistic pursuit, cutting a long story short this has since changed in a pretty big way and I am now pushing myself further and further with each piece with a consistency I have not known since graduating and flying the institutional nest.
To quote the great Vincent Van Gogh:
“I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort—and disappointment and perseverance.”
So true on many, many levels, all of the above I have now accepted as part of even attempting to make something worthwhile, something of value – and I don’t mean financial, I mean personally, intellectually, visually. Always taking the next step and discovering where it leads me. I’ve always considered my work to be very slow in its evolution but in hindsight I’m not so sure that this still rings true. I have seen some seismic shifts in not only the aesthetic but the intent in what I do. Perhaps this thought has triggered the need to actually take an overview of the last few years and see what and how things have changed?
Moving to more philosophical issues. The act of drawing…mark making. In my world, my practice, this means placing marks onto a sheet of paper and constructing one whole. It means a sequence of marks that combine, integrate and inform one another to manifest as organic looking forms which work to present my “sensations” to the viewer (to paraphrase Paul Cézanne). I think drawing is really is a transformative process in a decorative sense at least in that via a simple sheet of paper and a pen or a pencil an artist begins to enhance, change and mould the appearance of the paper. Exerting his or her will, ideas, thoughts and feelings onto it. I like the thought that a drawing holds history, can be visually dissected with inspection and it is this that can transport the viewer into the drawing and their own cerebral realms.
All of this is speculation and opinion I suppose, one thing I do know though for sure is that there is real joy, real pain to be had in creation.
Thank you for reading.
