I am still pondering movement and how to make it visible on paper. I am fascinated by the process, by the things which lie on the peripheries of our consciousness and experience; background noises such as the noise made by a pencil moving over paper, footsteps on a quiet morning, the wind blowing through the leaves, the sound of distant traffic; abandoned spaces where no-one goes; discarded objects; disintegration, defacement and decay. I prefer to be near the edge rather than in the thick of things.
I have been travelling around by public transport this weekend, so I used my time on the motorway to stare out of the window and hold pencil to paper, allowing the movement of the bus to move the pencil. It was a peaceful and meditative activity. My daughter wanted to have a go; I watched her as she became absorbed in the process, quickly losing the urge to correct, rub out, control. I think that this is one thing I seek when I make art; opening the self to the experience, relinquishing of control, acceptance of the result, whatever that may be.
This morning I sewed a pencil to the bottom of my bag and clipped my sketchbook to the top of it, and thereby managed to record the movement of my walk. These drawings fascinate me; the movement expressed in them is so much smaller and gentler that the actual experience would suggest. I’m struggling to articulate a growing idea about the disparity between something experienced in the imagination and something experienced in the real, physical world.
http://www.tillymackdraws.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/tillymackdraws
The experimental mark-making continues, with the continued absorption in the physical aspects of the process; pushing away, pulling towards, heavy marks, lighter marks, the sounds of the graphite and my hand moving across the paper. As I upload these images, they seem to me to echo the patterns and textures of the wood offcuts with their intensely tactile qualities.
I am considering now how to record my own movement by holding pen to paper as I am out walking; this inspired by a piece of work found as I browsed one of the Campaign for Drawing’s Power Drawing books looking for ideas for our Big Draw event. Everything seems to return to the same point.
So the 100 pieces of work are progressing. I am considering how my obsession with longhand writing and my love of abstract mark-making are going to marry up – or indeed if they are going to marry up… there are sure to be more twists to the tale, more changes of direction, like Alice chasing the White Rabbit; after all, it’s still early days.
Meanwhile, there is Sketchbook Circle, a new Art Therapy course, workshops and training events, community projects…. and a brand new joint business venture to work on and look forward to. Exciting times, busy times, with huge changes and huge amounts of growth. I am petrified and exhilarated in equal measure.
www.tillymackdraws.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/tillymackdraws
“Sometimes just the act of writing down the problems straightens out your head as to what they really are.”
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Chapter 9
I have decided to make writing a regular and more integral part of my practice. I am quite a compulsive longhand writer anyway; I find the repetitive rhythm of writing by hand soothing and almost hypnotic, and it is an activity which helps me to slip into a state of ‘flow’ easily, like doodling. I am also irresistibly drawn to the shapes made by words, fonts and handwriting, and I am a compulsive list-maker, sometimes writing, re-writing, editing and copying several times over.
Today I started my day by drinking a bottle of water and sitting in the quiet early morning writing in my notebook; it was quite intense. I sometimes experience what I call ‘sensory overload’, when everything seems magnified; often I experience stronger visual contrast between light and dark, and background noises come forward and I can almost hear the surrounding silence. I am trying to be more present in the moment, limiting time spent on social media and computers and connecting with my surroundings more deeply. I am becoming more interested in background noise, the noises we don’t usually notice like the noise of the pencil on the paper, our footsteps, distant traffic. I think this somehow ties in with my interest in discarded, forgotten objects, disused spaces, graffitti, urban decay.
I am trying new things within my own artistic practice, exploring new avenues, using different materials, moving out of my sketchbook. I found some old offcuts of wood on my allotment a few weeks ago; yesterday I brushed them down, painted them (not too carefully) and photographed them against a coloured background. I enjoy manipulating my images with photo editing software; it fascinates me that one image has infinite variations.
Today I have continued with my large-scale, gestural paintings. These are changing and evolving, too; I am using layers of paint and pastel, adding and rubbing back, using my non-dominant hand to make the outcome more unpredictable, enjoying relinquishing control. I have been photographing my paintings in parts and editing the images to make new ones – almost like shards of a fragmented whole.
Counting my paintings, notebook and photographs, I am making a fair attempt at producing 100 pieces of work before going back to Uni in September.
The past few weeks have been rather manic, to say the least. I have completed the summer intensive part of the Artist Teacher Scheme, an experience I found intensely liberating and also intensely emotional; I wanted to cry for several days on returning to work and had an in-depth discussion with my manager. Having coffee with my friend, soul sister and partner in crime Claire this morning, she pointed out that there is no going back – I can’t un-know this amazing experience. It is now settling and I have begun to process it, and I now need to find the way forward.
So Claire and I have been planning; just some small community events to start with, which will hopefully lead into some longer-running projects which will begin to build my profile as an artist, and Claire’s community play initiative, Your Turn.
As well as my plans for community art initiatives, I also have to produce 100 pieces of work by Saturday 3rd September, when we return to uni to start the second phase of the ATS, continue working on my TEA Sketchbook Circle books, go to work, and be a single mum.
I have cleared my dining table so I can work on the large gestural drawings which are my current interest, and which I started exploring in Sarah Goudie’s Drawing in Space workshops on the ATS. I am also exploring ideas about adding and taking away, asserting and obliterating, ebb and flow, a reflection of life on a piece of paper. I have been using pastels, charcoal and graphite, enjoying the physical involvement in the drawing process, the gestures and the tactile drawing materials, the sound of the drawing. I am fascinated by the rhythmic, hypnotic sounds of the materials on the paper, and have made a recording.
I’m not sure where I’m heading with this yet, so I am having to trust in the process and not worry about what the outcome will be.
