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.
