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?
Tried to post this under comments, but too long!! Being a bit obsessive, every time I try to think about something like this, I quickly get to a point where I need to go off and study for a year . The thoughts prompted by Elena and Alison rather stutter along, for the reason that after emerging they simply amplify my confusion. Nevertheless whilst they do not constitute an ‘Artists Statement’ they might be a kind of statement by a kind of artist. When I write this stuff, I have similar feelings to when I draw – ‘Are you sure?’ Well no, but that means I have to try to be unsure as precisely as I can. And I do often wonder what it means that I cannot construct a sensible ‘statement’, notwithstanding Alisons notion of a personal visual statement, and Rob’s connected idea that ‘….the drawing comes out the way it comes out and should have the status of a valid drawing.’
Whilst repetition operates at a technical level – doing a particular thing for a particular effect, it can be a personal returning driven by need, repeating what I do, repeating my ‘self’. The activity affirms the person, renews identity, creates a sense of relief through the return of the familiar, and the continuity of things. I feel also in what I do an echo of the kind of response that in animals whose young have died, as they call, nuzzle, watch, and gradually drift away. Making anything, but perhaps particularly making ‘art’ might be a matter of bringing to life, drawing something that was once alive is both a kind of restoration and futile denial of loss. Central to the quandary of repetition is what Elena points to in the differences that are found at different times, in different light and so on. Looking closely at the seagull this morning, I was aware of the visual qualities in front of me, but wondered what it was that I was experiencing. When anything creative happens, it must happen to the person through the work and not to the work through the person. The creative experience embodies personal change. To pick up on Rob Turner’s, comment on The Cooler King #8 once we become merely self indulgent as artists, we cease to make art. This all ties in I think with ‘media’ in that self indulgence occurs when we are corrupted by the superficialities of materials and their techniques – doing a particular thing for a particular effect and the artist is (un)made by the art. And equally, as Rob writes, ‘…you can’t do art wrong.’ But I think it possible to find work that thinks it is art but isn’t. As for the cake, I haven’t given up on it, it continues to dry and crumble in my workshop. It needs another year’s study!! Trafalgar Square plinth?
A seagull, in a gutter near Eastbourne. About a year old, surprisingly large, I found it impossible to ‘see’ it when I first began to draw.
I wondered how on earth I could draw the creature. I was completely without any imagination – the placing of a mark is an act of imagination, and I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even have a technique. The drawing was awful. And I felt incompetent. I’m having another of those periodic episodes when I know that I don’t know what I am doing, particularly here on a-n where my brain seems to have dried up. I often imagine those numberless artist who do not connect with groups such as this, and wonder what needs motivate us in our various directions. My little dog has to grip its teeth tightly onto a-n’s trouser-leg, growl and wait for the moment to pass. The problem of the ‘Artists statement’ has drifted back to me recently, because from one perspective, I’m simply drawing birds in a reasonably competent way, when I guess my pretensions wish for something more. Why else is there no statement? Making this drawing, I arrived at the point where I had to work through my failure. I noticed the silence, and put some music on, which stirred me up a little, and I got a rhythm going. I’m no dancer, but there is something of the dance in drawing, a mirroring of line, connections through space and movement, reciprocity, a conversation of touch. Perhaps it’s a displacement activity. I’m tempted to think of it in terms of a kind of lived metonym, whereby the life lived stands for what is really desired. Gradually, pattern and form emerge from confusion.
The weather is becoming doom laden and dull. I dislike it and shall until it recedes. In recent years we have had months of dull grey over the Christmas period. At a particularly low moment whilst drawing I went to make a cup of tea. On my way back, I noticed what appeared to be a leaf on top of a fat ball hung out for the birds. Looking more closely, I saw it was a mouse, reddish brown with large ears. It remained for a while, motionless on the fat-ball, and then moved carefully to the dark shadow beneath the bird-table, where it sat, absolutely still, either unaware of its tail hanging vulnerable below it, or unable to do anything about it.
I went to Frieze. Five hours on my feet. Exhausting. The rich must be tough. Missed the Art Crab. Saw a Henry Moore. Boat – Art is my cake writ large – bigged up big time? Asda art is ‘Chosen by You’ – Boat Art, your exclusive choice. Any difference? Of course there is. Purchase the cake and you have a £1 rollback bargain route to mastication heaven. Buy them both and you can sail and chew art simultaneously. Maybe Asda could issue certification of their goods as Art for an extra 10% at the checkout, and then roll back to 5% and watch sales soar. Interestingly the artist created a piece in 1992 in which he went into a supermarket with a bow and arrows and ‘hunted’ his purchases, which were taken to the checkout impaled upon hisarrows.http://www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/christian-jankowski/works/ In these collaborative times, I wonder if I could give away a signed cake to all purchasers of the boat? Different worlds. I’ve been drawing another bird, this time with considerable patience. I’m building up quite a collection. I don’t quite want to repeat myself, but there is something satisfying about the increasing obsessive nature of it. The act of drawing itself is repetitive at all levels of looking, describing, feeling, correcting, finding appropriate marks, pressures, actions, discovering, examining, reflecting, doubting, enjoying.. Perhaps I do want to repeat myself. If you can’t help it, enjoy it. I’m not an experimenter, more beachcomber.
A moorhen. Drawing with Bert Jansch and then Little Richard. I thought that I would make some observational studies, but as soon as I began, I found that I could work in only one way, hurried and gestural. Inappropriate music perhaps. I’ve worked like this before, and it’s maybe a bit of a cliché, but sometimes it feels like it is necessary to be bluntly physical with a drawing. When it goes wrong, the battle to restore it is part and parcel. Medium and message. Errors in making are errors in message also. Going back to comments on previous posts, I wonder what is the medium of media. Zeitgeist? The description of the relationship between medium and message as mechanistic seems suspect, a false distinction? Back to Little Richard.
