A thought crossed my mind earlier, my work trades a lot with repetition, I routinely spend endless hours in a state of concentration repeating a form over and over again. These small, simple forms interact with one another and develop into a much larger mass. I have always worked from a “base” of ideas in mind but allowed the drawing to build itself using this base as a springboard only. This led my to think that my drawing practice is not so much about the actual image and its content but actually about what that particular form allows me to think about whilst the pen is in motion. What does the image spilling out in front of me
Remind me of? Does it fit with my base ideas – if not, how is it informing and updating them? There’s no doubt about it that within these often small and delicately detailed drawings lays a machismo where I pit my nerve and my patience against the possibility of failiure in terms of not realising the drawing to its conclusion.
Drawing to me is becoming as much about the thought whilst in flow as the finished drawing itself.
I have toyed with the idea (only in thought to be honest) about using these thoughts and images that my mind conjures to create other drawings that are in a sense totally abstract and removed from what I normally do. I am talking about bringing figurative elements into my work – maybe even full figuration to be displayed along the works from which these ideas came.
Needless to say I am only in the very earliest stages of this potential new route but to my mind it is going to be worth exploring as it could add an interesting dimension to my practice.
I would definitely consider beginning a regime to develop and sharpen very rusty observational drawing skills – maybe an hour a day would be manageable with my current life/ workload. The thing is I am a certain type of artist that does a certain type of drawing, to diversify I would need to accept a different skill base and approach would need to be learnt…actually quite an exciting thought since I haven’t drawn anything from observation in the best part of ten years.
Incidently one massive benefit of reflective writing such as a blog is it incubates ideas and open doors that drawing alone would probably not of opened. Get writing and enjoy the benefits!
Anyway, I must dash. Thank you as always for reading my splurges of thought.
