I find myself ready to show this series of drawings. Happily, they will be shown as my Candidate’s submission for the RBSA exhibition to decide whether or not I can become a full member of this historic society. (I’ve been an Associate Member for the required three years)
In the past, an exhibition has often been the point at which I depart, and seek the next idea. But I do feel with this lot, that I’m not anywhere near done yet. I’ve not answered the question yet: Can the unsettling feelings of rootlessness be conveyed through the subversion of traditional observational drawings?
I think, through an exploration of scale, composition, and manipulating the relationships between these natural objects, extracted from their original environments, that I am starting to get somewhere. I’m finding that little bit of weirdness that makes my skin prickle a bit… but there’s more to be done.
A few posts ago I mentioned the Assembled Utterances idea. I think that’s what I need to remember. I am gathering objects and ideas and metaphors and meaning, straining at the semiotics of the work to find something new… in order to express it.
By continuing to observe and record these found natural objects I examine and record, I am seeking common properties, to try to link them as families. I’m looking for the inherited qualities that make them (and then as signifiers of me, the signified)… family.
It all comes back to family in the end. Or whatever word you want to use for those connections we hold with each other.
