I’m not sure of the presence of any sense in this.
Each time I try to write about something I start with confidence and descend into uncertainty. Like this drawing thing which is around at the moment. Musing around with my thoughts, some things about drawing seem so apparent. Yet when I try to put the thoughts into sentences, they are anything but.
I’ve been drawing for years. I ought to know something. But I realize that all the time I have been doing it, I appear not to have been reflecting on it?
I thought, some drawing is like running – I visualized drawing without narrative, like running, a condition of things and not an analysis – some drawing analyses, some drawing synthesizes. I started thinking about this through reading Rebecca Cusworth, Susan Francis, and today, Clare Smith. in the blogs. What makes some minds stop at the Renaissance? Perhaps it’s a temperament thing.
What is a mirror like accuracy? Is it possible? Is a mirror image to do with deception? Can drawing deceive? Can we be deceived without being ready for it? The lesson that drawing teaches me is that I fall short always. But am I simply afraid of failure and use drawing to control or confront the fear? And as I write the sentence, I wonder what it is that I fall short of? (I think I’m a bit of a sucker for glorious disaster.) I think that I mean that in some respects I am always aware of struggle. When I draw, I suppose that I do not have an intention, or maybe that intentions can seem pretentious, or I find my intentions after the fact. But is this sufficient? Should I have a respectable intention? Sometimes I think that my drawing of dead and dying things is a look into my future, an acknowledgement. I empathise with my subjects.( But I rarely confess to this; I feel the withering indifference of conceptualists. I am embarrassed by laughter at the angst-ridden painter.) And I am not even sure if it is true. Possible meanings are always possible. Pay your money and take your pick; stick meaning like post-it notes onto the floating signifier. Drawings arise from an unsatisfied longing? All activity strives to banish fear? It’s not that we need to feel good, but rather that we don’t want to feel bad. Drawing is one metaphor among many. It has that in common with all activities which risk disaster? And as I think about it , drawing is the overarching metaphor; all activities involve some kind of ‘drawing out’ of structure and content. This is why my attempt to understand, (for want of a better word,) art consists in part of a search for a common thread which might be carried by the concept of drawing. Drawing in all its forms seems to be one thing that historically is always present Perhaps that is why anything can be Art.
