Studies: graphite on paper, 316 x 237 mm. From the maquette
When evolving an idea, there comes a time for leaving the process to the subconscious; to open it out to other influences and make new connections: this takes time. I remember when taking my physics A level at school, the best strategy for solving a particularly difficult problem was to read what was needed, identify the equations and methodology, understand the variables, try a few things out and then sleep on it. Perhaps the next day or a little later, the solution would present itself as though the most natural of outcomes. I am not saying that solving a physics question is comparable to producing a work of art. I only mention this because the mind continues working in the most wonderful ways while we are distracted elsewhere. By going to sleep on a problem, we dream and see things from different perspectives in different contexts. This enables solutions to arise that would otherwise be constrained by fixed thinking. My attention is now turning to sound, relics, shadows and other things. I leave this particular part of the project in a place where, of its own account, it can respond to different ideas and methodologies and await a refreshed return.
Taken after I had completed the drawing. There are well over one hundred images and I have chosen nine, not for their aesthetic, formal content but for their ability to convey information and ideas that take me beyond considerations of the sculpture alone.
Studies: graphite on paper, 316 x 237 mm. From the maquette
Not everything has to have a reason. As I work, an internal dialogue continually debates, interrogates, plays the devil’s advocate: what is this for, is this more effective, where will you go from here? At times I need to cover my ears from these voices that stop me from travelling to, I do not know where. The place does not matter in the doing, but here lies the rub, how do I mark the path by which I have sleep-walked to this clearing in the fog of work? Experience follows me on the trail to a new place, it is she that leaves the marks on the walls of the maze I have wandered into. The journey made familiar, I can follow my way back without minding the why. I need to find my way back, because I cannot stay where I am and sometime I might want to return.
Not everything has to have a reason. Only on the return journey might I encounter the why of something I did. Moments after, or years, unencumbered by thoughts of purpose, ideas that once were awkward come together and show me a different place, the significance of peculiar details. Details in a myth built from once cloven thoughts rejoined. These maquettes are such confections, wrought to be returned to dust, their image grasped with camera and pencil as they dry and crack and crumble before me, they become the memory that builds the life of the idea. Accreting to one another their weight is felt inside me, and the work is done under their gravity, reflection having been done so that feeling and understanding cause the motion and my mind moves to the next place I do not know where or for what reason.
Studies: graphite on paper, 316 x 237 mm. From the maquette
Today I made the first maquette for the work I am currently calling Oracle. It is a continuation of the sketches in Drawings 1 and Drawings 2 in unfired clay and metal wires. Although the final intention is quite the reverse, I am thinking about how language is digested and deconstructed through the alimentary canal of human behaviour. Starting as incoherent noises a comprehensible message emerges at the other end. The Oracles of ancient Greece and Rome worked on this principle and functioned as political spin, from the personal and local to the national and imperial, ambivalence and ambiguity almost always the mode of interpretation. Has it ever been any different for those in power, regarding today’s politics? Is this not what religions do when interpreting the numinous in a bid to acquire and keep hold of power? Take an unexplained phenomenon and make of it what you will.
However, as I mentioned at the start, this work is intended to reverse the process: converting a comprehensible message into an incomprehensible babble in real time. Words are deconstructed as in a form of Chinese whispers from the initial utterance to a final noise. Along the way different iterations of this deconstruction are audible adding to the confusion… all in real time. Is this not what happens to what is said as it passes down and away from its source? This is at the heart of the process of collective assimilation of individual attempts to communicate.
The maquette is already cracking and breaking up. It disintegrates as do so many thoughts that need be transcribed into a more durable form for retrospection and reflection. This disintegration is part of the cycle of things… I envisage the sculpture being held up by iron rods and suspended from above with iron wires. I can use other materials as I look into different configurations while I research the sonic component. But the things is to always start with what is at hand: plaster, air drying clay, paper mache, metal, stone are all considerations. Eventually I shall make a more permanent scale model to resolve difficulties in making and installation; I am sure that new ideas and solutions will meet me along the way. And as I work on this I will consider it holistically with the other works in mind. Language, myth, ritual, group, self, absence, disintegration, unification, permanence, transience…
As the maquette disintegrates, its container is made: the rests of an idea.
I am drawing as a way of originating an idea. The word idea has its roots in the Greek Ennoia which literally means “act of thinking” as well as “form” and “the look of a thing”. Related to this is idein, Ancient Greek for “seeing in a creative manner”. How fitting it is that a drawing should be a creative way of seeing an idea: a visible manifestation of thinking. This is such a powerful tool for origination.
Images and words are starting to merge; not as equivalents but as different expressions of an emerging idea. My use of words follows drawing, as reflection on the act follows reflection in the action. This process is leading to ideas related to what I said at the start, that I see my practice as a stage on which a play of sorts is enacted.
The narrative I alluded to in a previous post, started to emerge in drawing 4 and these sketches have crystallised this a little more, particularly in the context of drawing 3. I do not want to say too much at this stage; to keep the revealing in motion and not cut the process prematurely. The creature stands as I, on the threshold of something broad and unknown. Through this metaphor I have seen a glimpse of a transformative process leading to a collection of existential works. It is the origination of a personal mythology.
The worn graphite pencil glides to and fro searching form, trying to enter the flat surface bounded by the small parcel of paper. Changing faces, it deftly leaves a trace that grows careful not to mark the paper indelibly with a false word. Thought is suspended in the uncertainty of emergence, I keep quiet and let the form tell me what to do. I am in its embrace, as the pewter carbon slates off the point until, it asks me, what shall I do next? We are now partners in shaping this tiny world. For now it must be all the world, no distraction except for breath. Time does not count in this place, movement reckons change: too much and life is extinguished, too little and we are left wondering what if. Imperfections must be left behind; corrections will unravel all that has been done as lines coalesce into form, light and shade becoming sensible with words of recognition. And so the meaning passes onto me as I hear the other’s voice grow faint in this world. My hope is that it waits for me in the next.
Today has been the darkest day of the season; rain and cloud but it is not cold. Does the weather influence work? It may do but what it most certainly does is influence mood and interpretation. If interpretation is part of the work, particularly in-action reflection, then the weather must in some way influence the work.
These sketches unlike the previous ones are more of a sequence than a series. It appears to me that one sketch led to another and that by the time I had reached the final vignettes a narrative had started to emerge. I really was not trying to create a narrative but it seems to have come about spontaneously. Is this because subconsciously I look for a narrative or is it that having completed the previous series of drawings, I am becoming more fluent and synthetic? Is it that I am linking the images despite myself?
I was not aware of any particular theme at the outset but during the course of the sketches, a familiar notion has started to show its face.
I am constantly leaving breadcrumbs as I wander through the forest.
The process of this MA is very much about that, process. I am willing to get lost in it as I search for a path towards finding new things and ways. I am consciously entering unchartered domains despite my having established a practice over the years. I feel to not have done so would have been complacent of me. Instead, I have elected to relearn. The drawings are emblematic of this, the way I feel about doing them is an acceptance of being in the process and allowing myself to get lost. It is also a return to origins, to what I did first. However, the point is that each time I explore and find new things I am in danger of getting lost to such an extent that to find my way out again might prove costly in terms of my relationship with my work. What I am in fact doing is looking to create small outcomes along the way, as in Post Truth Hurtling, and the drawings. These are signposts I am planting as I map unknown territories. Each marker keeps me located and the path taken made retraceable. That is one purpose for keeping a journal. To keep everything in the head is not good for my own sanity: the exploration may be conceptual in nature but the outcome is the concrete ballast that keeps me from capsizing against the storm of ideas that I face.
Today I drew another set of studies. It really is an exploratory activity and a reacquaintance with drawing. The images do not conform to the ideas I have for project work but I am glad for that. Breaking away from the constraint of a predetermined outcome fills me with a sense of freedom and renewal; what I talked about in my first post, Elastic Thinking, Synthesis and Renewal. It is in the true spirit of the MA. From these studies something may come but come what may, the thing itself seems to be what matters. The action, the thought, what it might lead to, give me the same feeling I had when I first started years ago. This happens from time to time but for it to happen now is wonderful.
As I draw I think. I think about what I am doing and how it can be done better. I am learning rapidly as it comes back to me compounded by what I have learnt and experienced along the way. These small sketches represent much more than what they are in themselves.
As part of my brain focuses on the technical activity, another part nudges me into feeling my way, sensing the concept and translating it into a language expressed in pressure, sense of space, distance and closeness, weight, light, volume. These are all empirical technical aspects. There is also another part of my brain that is released and wanders and thinks of other things. Reflection on the doing and reflection on the reflection.
I like the way that all this is achievable with the simplest of tools. A block of toothy paper and two graphite pencils. Is this not the simplicity with which artist worked before? From Lascaux to Phidias, Michelangelo to Ingres, Picasso to Moore. The most exquisite work was done with simple tools and materials. How does this compare with digital media? Is the digital another freedom or is it a self imposed exile into consumerism? I have drawn with digital media and found it a rewarding exercise but more for the outcome than process. The smooth layers, the faultless line, edges that leave no ambiguity. It is indeed very seductive and aesthetic. I have rationalised it and it appears valid. But I ask myself, have we become so accustomed to perfection that we are in danger of losing sight of what human creativity is and where it comes from? Is the machine to be the paradigm by which we measure and are measured and origins lost in time and made irrelevant? So many questions come to mind offering contradictory views it is overwhelming. For now I shall continue building this small, simple, limitless world and see what happens.
Yesterday I began drawing once again; I have not done so for its own sake for what seems a very long time. The pencil is so incisive and yet so gentle, like no other medium. Graphite slides off the point in response to my decisiveness, tentativeness, hesitation and insistence. It does not lie, it is an analytical instrument that exposes thoughts and my ability to portray them. Its limits are my own. Its freedom is my own. It veils and discloses, it explicates and it confounds.
I shall draw continuously as a means of asking questions and finding answers. These preliminary sketches are the start of an exploration intended to bring forth ideas for some of the works I have in mind. Particularly what I call for now, Oracle and Sculpture Waiting for Meaning. But the story does not end there. Drawing opens up a world of meaning that is not there in writing. Both writing and drawing are means of externalising thoughts and feelings; they inhabit different realms limited by their own modes of expression and powers to imply. By drawing I recognise my own limitations and constraints which heightens a sense and understanding of freedom.
