Years ago I used to run, not very fast. I wasn’t going anywhere. The repetitive nature of running was what it was about. It was simple and physical, variations in surface, rough, smooth, wet, slippery, an occasional hill, sometimes mostly hill, and then the pleasure of the downhill. Running into the wind was always intensely irritating. I took it personally that the wind opposed me; immensely counterproductive irritation stained the experience. But running with the wind at my back was lovely; and like hills, you have to have it both ways. Physical work is a thing in itself; drawing is a physical act in itself, for itself, of itself? Is just the fact of making things that are named paintings, drawings and so on, enough? Enough for what? Just enough like running. What becomes of the thing left over, the ‘drawing’ when the day ends? Show it to other people? Put it in a box? It is the memory of a run. It is a record, to fade; I was there and I did that. (in terms of my movements and gestures, I did ‘this’)
If I ask myself what I feel about something such as a an artwork, I point to elements and aspects of the thing, describing possibilities and possible names. Naming creates context. Context forms meaning. Some of the marks here are weaker than others. I scribble a bit and think ‘Cy Twombly” and the sounds of Cy and sigh. I hit the paper with my graphite. ‘I don’t paint, I hit,’ said Karel Appel. I want a distinction to disappear, for birdmarks and other marks to become ambiguous, for the exact placing of the bird to become an impossibility and for it to still be ‘there’. I too hit, to beat distinction into submission. I hit. Hitting draws. Ambiguity, ambivalence, repeat as the act of hitting. I feel momentary satisfaction and then the thing is slipping away, the drawing thing, the image thing, the object thing. In my workshop in my garden in my middle-class road I am ambivalent about Twombly’s marks and mine. This drawing is 5ft long. Drawing and running temporarily exhaust the irritations.
