How many ways can you draw a pheasant?I found the bird whilst I was en-route to Hastings, on New Year’s Day.Picked it up a little reluctantly. Attractive bird. Attractiveness has its drawbacks.Attractiveness is seductive. But I couldn’t not accept it. Immensely difficult for me.Drawing is a mental act? Clumsiness can occur almost unnoticed. Thinking is a physical act? Clumsiness is thoughtlessness. The mark is either/neither right or wrong.Listening to Miles Davis. Davis transcends technique. No erasing necessary.Referring to a Japanese visual art in which ‘Erasures or changes are impossible, Bill Evans observes that, “….This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.” (From Bill Evans’ notes on ‘Kind of Blue’, Miles Davis.)I compromise. Errors of proportion mean that I begin again?I compromise. If I keep at it, it might revive.What kind of object am I making?
Once as a child, in the countryside, I looked down on some undergrowth, and as I looked, the image of a pheasant seemed to grow before me. It was a moment of visual magic and intense feeling of stillness as the bird, aware of my presence as it must have been, remained, if such a thing is possible, intensely motionless, as it simultaneously ‘appeared’. Or as I simultaneously became aware of it?
