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.
With reference to Jane Boyer’s comment below.
Essentially I think that the merely tasteful is not Art, but Art objects can be tasteful. Taste objects are class based tribal totems. Art objects can take any form. The distinction between the intellectual and the physical is false in that thinking is making, making is thinking. (when we think ‘about’ something, we are nevertheless making) Intellectualising is inevitable since we ask what things mean. We cannot know what something means without making something else. (responding to it) Creativity fractures taste.
I attempt periodically to discover what I can say about what I do, and to say it succinctly.And if I can say anything, where has it come from? Have I invented a spurious fiction, or engaged in a process of revelation? I have a similar difficulty with words as with images. If they are not right, they are wrong.This painting has obviously evolved. I didn’t exactly catch it unawares, but I have been a little surprised by it. I thought it was going to die.
The dividing line is intransigent, unsympathetic, uncompromising. provoking claustrophobic sensations. But I am compelled to return to it, in the hope that it will have mellowed, will compromise, sympathise, and my return is welcomed. In painting it I appeal to it to be different.Being tied into repetition of subject-matter signals unresolved need, nuances of image nudge the imagination into further uncertain territory. The dividing line moves to create unequal distribution of surface. The stillness of flower and bird is both reassuring and disconcerting. Not knowing past or future they are suspended in continuous present. They remain forever close and infinitely distant.The issue is resolved when its imagery is redundant.
Painting today. One of those times when the doing is a kind of aimless search. Like singing out of tune – you know you are doing it but each attempt at correction produces another discord. I think I just wanted to mix paint. Blobs of soft pigment mixed with glaze medium. There is a decadence about it. A submission to purposeless physicality. For a while the mixing and spreading is enjoyable. Then only repetitive. It seems that periods of such activity are integral to the process, a flushing of the system, to be endured until purpose returns. A time of doubt. And today I noticed a greying of the light that leads into autumn and then winter. I dislike the short grey winter days. Rain and wind and contrast are fine, but still greyness is debilitating. Odd that I am using a lot of grey. It’s the contrast that must be rediscovered. Not necessarily violent contrast, but purposeful difference. Chord as well as discord. I thought that I would chart the path ( I nearly wrote ‘progress’) of this day’s work in the hope that its aimlessness would be overcome. I shall catch it unawares tomorrow, maybe surprise it into reaction.
