I now have six or seven bra drawings… haven’t counted properly.
The more I do, the more I love them. There is something about a simple ink line drawing that appeals to me. There’s nowhere to hide is there? I have chucked out a couple of drawings because the line has strayed from its path, looks unclean. There is a fragile crispness about the ink on the white layout paper.
The discarded pile of fabric, holds a certain distorted form, without the body inside it. I needed to gather comment, to tell me where this might lead me. Some saw the abandonment of this garment as a sexual act. Others saw it as symbolic of our mortality. A loss of sexuality and libido rather than an illustration of it.
When I started this series of drawings I was shocked by how quickly my thoughts developed. I do life drawing, and I draw visual notes in my sketch books. The drawing is usually a way of annotating my work. It is a very long time since the drawing itself has been the art.
But this series of observational line drawings are more than just the drawings. And despite the change in choice of material, there are clear links to what has gone before. I am still using clothes to say things about their wearers and to elicit thought from and about the viewer. The viewers’ memory is vital to my work I think.
The change of materials has been coming for a while too, eventually emerging when I had no choice but to find another way of working. So now I am not automatically reaching for my needle, I am making choices from a wider field. Also, since the enforced period of not-sewing, my work has been produced much more quickly. To be honest, that was due too. I was getting stitched up in it all. The drawings seem fresh to me.
I am plucking up courage to draw my own underwear. Yet as I type this, a sneer of distaste passes across my face. Drawing other people’s anonymous bras seems sanitised. I haven’t yet decided if that is a good or a bad thing. Probably it is only by drawing my own I will find out. I was also offered an old bra by a friend… I said yes, but I’m not sure how I feel about that either till it happens. It might then become a type of portrait.
Is anonymity safe, universal and symbolic?
Once I start drawing underwear of the known wearer, does it change into something else for me? Obviously the eventual viewer will be unaware of personality and ownership.
My thoughts had been about menopausal women, and self esteem. But just because that’s where I am, doesn’t mean that is where the viewer has to be does it?
