Someone on Facebook asked me what these drawings were about. This is always a good way to consolidate and clarify my thoughts, trying to explain them to someone else:
“Tricky… They’ve emerged from work about family, connections, touch…. How one person has an affect on another… Physically or emotionally, or psychologically… Or perhaps inherited traits, memory…. But the abstraction of those thoughts has come up with drawings that are visually like botanical drawings, or cells, nerves… Organic shapes that connect and effect each other…ripen, mature, mutate….
These are all themes that I was working on with my textile pieces, but the drawings seem to be getting me to places the stitches couldn’t….
But of course, as the viewer, they’re whatever you want them to be, there’s room for everyone… Which is also part of the work… Effect and influence… Goes both ways…”
Circumstances forced me to work differently. In doing so I was able to see the “stuckness” of my stitched work. The last few stitched pieces were saying nothin new really… I was grasping… Poking… Trying to find something.
Working in a different medium pushed different buttons. I questioned whether this would be another point of abandonment… But I think I’m starting to see how I might continue with the textile work now… I think I was being (had become) a bit safe and reverential with the found textiles, particularly the garments… I think I might have to get a bit more destructive with them in order to create what I need. They need to be abstracted in order to push at the edges.
The drawings have come up with representations and devices that relate and pull and push. I was unable to see this with the garments and chairs. Having identified with these objects, I needed to let them go. They were holding my thoughts too greedily. I’m not ready to pick up my needle again just yet… But I can see the time ahead when I might be ripping sleeves out….
I think the drawings are maps…
