Two birds. One bird twice. Not birds at all. Drawings of a bird. Except that I remember on another blog (but not which one) a reference to drawings being not ‘of’ but ‘about’ something. It’s made me feel uncomfortable with regard to making drawings ‘of’ because it makes sense that representations are never simply ‘of’ their ostensible subject-matter, but necessarily involve engagement; the object cannot represent itself. I have this possibly irrational need for something which put crudely approximates to the idea of accuracy, which can never be satisfied, and which is where I think ‘of’ comes from. A line used to describe a boundary of some sort has to make sense in a boundary kind of way. And then there is the possibility of poetry of line. If the drawing is ‘of’ then the poetry is somehow accidental, or contingent. Or perhaps there is an insight of some other kind. Authenticity arises at the nerve endings, preverbally. All this mental fiddling around grows out of distrust, (or is it uncertainty?) which contributes to a chronic lack of equilibrium. For a long time I have lived in kind of fear of ‘contemporary’ art (I don’t wish to over-dramatise, it’s not like ‘real’ fear) for fundamentally egotistical reasons. I’m getting better.
