I have just been catching up with Susan Francis’s blog, ‘Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child’ and I came across an entry where she had quoted myself:
‘…Now if I was to create a representational image I use my camera, I reserve my drawings for notions, suggestion and whispers’
Reading back my own words there seemed something mildly fraudulent to them, as over these last few weeks I have been making 100s of observational drawings, and while they as not realistic per se, they certainly dawdle close to representational. Although the majority of the museums in Tuscany do forbid photography so a drawing is only way I have available to record the objects and artifacts that catch my eye, so perhaps not a change in the philosophy of my practice after all. But she asks an important question – ‘why do we draw!’
Something else has been on my mind. Every day tourists see me sketching away and keenly lean over my sketchbook expecting to see Di Vinci-esk drawing, most walk away with a look of confusion, and a few have uttered ‘I don’t understand abstract art’. Abstract Art. Am I an Abstract artist? It certainly not a title I’d apply to myself, but I better double-check this. I listened to a 5 hour podcast of the ‘Abstraction Study Day’ that ran at the Tate for some advice.
My conclusion? Well firstly let me say that I write this query in mild jest, as I have little desire the title myself at all. But what did stand out to me in the Tate Talk was the discussion about how the art of non-western cultures, Aboriginal, Navajo, African tribal arts, is not considered Abstract art.
Considering my notions behind my drawings, the ideas of meditation, subconscious narratives, mark making as a ritualistic response to my surroundings, perhaps my drawings are more closely aligned with the work of the cultures I’ve been studying at the Anthropology museum than that of an Abstract artist.
But then again I am not of these cultures, I am an artist working in the 21st century, where the decision to make a non-representational image has a different function.
Ponder ponder..
