Sketchbook thoughts

Sketchbook thoughts.   Click on image to enlarge

 

 

Drop pattern, watching it drip

 

Drop rhythm

 

 

 

 

Coiled and Twisting form

                                             

A shell is built from the inside out. A visual analysis of the space inside

Poem found in The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard
So now I have become a decorative drawing
Sentimental scrolls
Coiling spirals
An organized surface in black and white
An yet I just heard myself breathe
Is it really a drawing
Is it really I.

Pierre Albert Birot

Click on an image to enlarge

Drawing Without words  my  Post Graduate Forum talk

Making some recent drawings, I had to remind myself to study the object but look without recognition, to let go of any expectations of how it might look and just observe it as it really is. So to quieten the inner narrative I deliberately cut out thoughts of knowing what it is or looks like because that reading will lead the drawing and it will then look like the thing I expect to see.

 “Thought and language is not the same thing”
Professor Nancy Kanwisher.  From the Institute for Brain Research, in Massachusetts:

Kanwisher uses the metaphor of the brain as a “Swiss Army knife” containing a lot of different tools rather than a single all purpose tool.

Specialised regions for specific cognitive tasks have been discovered for the perception of faces, bodies, words and an area that specializes in processing places.

Recognition has no words it is wired straight to those brain hot spots.

Observation over a prior knowledge remains important to visual understanding and communication. A viewer will recognise an experience before being aware of what the actual event is, this instant interpretation is used continuously and reflects our inbuilt knowledge as we glimpse fragments throughout our everyday life.
 It is our brains that do the hard work to complete partial information and understand the things around us without us ever recognising this process.

Unconsciously working hard to complete the unfinished or ambiguous image, the brain is always searching for recognisable qualities. It’s how our brain sees everything, only later adding our knowledge, experience, memory and culture.

In the glimpse there is ambiguity and smudginess as opposed to the drier accuracy at the other end of the scale of the unambiguous, academic or technical drawing discipline.
The connections between seeing and drawing can become a constituent of an abstract image.

In “Great Drawings of the world “ the author, Una Johnson says:

“drawings are the result of the artists efforts to organise a vision whether it is visible or invisible to the naked eye, into a structural whole
This requires the ability to select and emphasise differing elements and eliminate inconsequential details”.

I use observation to understand visually not literally, looking for the differences between things, together with qualities like density and space that can inform an abstract drawing.

Drawn from the National

Walking through the gallery   -   click on an image to enlarge

Speed was essential to make these studies. I noticed when looking at the complicated figures in Carrado Giaquinto's painting that the less I looked at my paper and just let my eye follow the shapes around the canvas I could draw letting go of thought. My hand and eye made a direct connection and seemed to ignore any other thinking.

 

Carrado Giaquinto 1703-1766, Moses striking a rock

 

The action and rhythms of the figures and clothing, enhance the flow of water as it pours from the rock and down through the image, to the stillness of the smooth puddle in the bottom right hand corner.

 

This slowly spreading puddle looks peculiar but acts as if to contain the fall of the crowd in the bottom right corner.

The Tribute Money, about 1560-8, Titian

 

 

Rain, Steam, Speed, 1844 William Turner

" The artist delights to go back to the chaos of the world...all is without form and void; they are pictures of nothing, and very like". Hazlitt

Energy within the systems

Leonardo searched through drawing to understand universal principles and the living energy within these systems. Through intense observation he developed a rational approach in his search for suitable forms.

Leonardo - Eddy

“The mind of a painter must be like a mirror, which always changes to the colour of the thing that is in front of it and is filled with as many images as there are things before it”.

He was scientifically driven to understand the visible motion of waves and currents and needed to communicate the power of water to move and destroy. Initially he visually describes the construction of water and the patterns that continually emerge.

Leonardo - Coils of rain and lightening

Leonardo - Deluge

Leonardo - Flowing

The Royal Collection: A deluge

“The artist who paints according to his talent and his eye, without using his mind, is like a mirror reflects everything that stands before it, without knowing what it is”.

Leonardo da Vinci –Landscapes and plants Edited Ludwig Goldscheider- Phaidon Press-1952

Leonardo connects man and the world, breathing with the ebb and flow of blood as rivers and bones as mountain ranges which he describes as “Chains of the World” and they are determined by the flow of waters rain, hail, snow, melted ice.

In his Deluge series he developed a visual reality from his thoughts of unseen events, what might happen if... repetition and changes of scale express apocalyptical possibilities.
So it becomes landscape in a flux, storms, the end of the world as it returns to an original state of chaos, that is the natural state of the world.

He kept hese drawings as an archive that he could return to when answering visual problems, (they were found in his studio at his death) but were they able to be understood at that time by the observer?

Michael Craig Martin talking at the National Gallery

Drawings, photo's, montage, from rhythms and movement of water.

"Only observation is the key to understanding". Leonardo

Click on image to enlarge

'How to' illustration in old book - drawing ripples

Swell Montage -  cut photographs 

 Sliced and recombined, sea swell photographs - disturbed and disrupted flow. 

flow-control-obstruct along the River Mole

 Photograph 1. stepping stones

 Photograph 2. ripples

  Photograph 3. weir

  Photograph 4. stir

 Photograph 5. pour

Swelling of the Sea, Furthest West - The Atlantic Ocean. Thomas Joshua Cooper 1990

 Sam Francis blue composition 1954 - oil on canvas

Joseph Beuys is concerned with looking at matter and energy, fixed and fluidity. Principles that organise and other manifestations of force in the universe.

He is exploring drawing in ways to evoke energy in his "Drawings after the Codices Madrid"  Leonardo Da Vinci.

"The energy of the drawn line creates a symbiosis between the life of the mind and of the thing being depicted" Beuys

Joseph Beuys, Unbetitelt, undatiert, Datierungsvorschlag, 1945. Collection Museum Schloss Mayland © Joseph Beuys Estate/VG Bild-Kunst,

Lost in an art installation

On entering the Tate Gallery I notice a large section that looks as if it is closed for re-hanging, I try to find the entrance to Mike Nelson’s Coral Reef and look for the usual white space. A gallery attendant points to the scruffy and insignificant door. There are no signs, no indication of what might be inside.

It looks like an abandoned Taxi cab office. Through the next door, another neglected space and down this grubby corridor more rooms with signs of a shady past, or waiting areas for something unpleasant. I tread carefully in the dim lighting, past old worn couches, random light fittings, and assorted objects left behind after a quick exit. These objects are familiar, reference past fears and are disturbing. There is a variety of office seating and a used mattress possibly taken from a skip?  I had a couch just like that in a bedsit but had to cover it in flea powder before sitting on it. Everything has had a previous use and the feeling of hopelessness builds. I carry on past grimy carpets and temporary floor surfaces, these abandoned spaces continue to imply unease, what lies beneath the layers of old newspaper on the floor? More doors; do I want to continue on or return?

This is hard work, most exhibitions usually have a preferred route, mapping the way through from beginning to end. You know how to navigate it even if you prefer to make your own way around. At least you can be sure not to miss the good bits.
Ah I think I've been here before but now choose another door. I pass one or two people and can hear footsteps elsewhere and distant door hinges squeaking, so many small, hostile rooms seem to interconnect endlessly.

Which way next errm...

Ah here’s an attendant or is he a security guard, is he part of this … I ask, he is not.

Round a corner and through more small unpleasant spaces, (It’s quite creative how many ways you can make a room look sordid) I have seen these places before in films, bad dreams and reality, only this time it is the artist controlling my time in here. Have I been in this room before...

It’s quiet no other sounds, footsteps or squeaking doors ... it’s very quiet... it would be funny if I couldn't find the way out... I feel uncomfortable... why haven’t I bothered to notice the direction I came in... How did I get to this bit...  I acknowledge a slight unease... where was that security bloke?

Searching for the way back I find more rooms I don’t recognise and there are no signs that might help my disorientation. It’s so quiet now, where has everyone gone? I wish I was with someone in here... I wonder what would happen if I had a panic attack... err, don't know if I ever actually had a real one... don’t know how I would react if... and now with this thought I do start to feel very scared. I don't know how I would be if I lost control?

"We do not have to be long in the woods to experience the always rather anxious impression of going deeper and deeper’ into a limitless world. Soon, if we do not know where we are going, we no longer know where we are". Gaston Bachelard – The Poetics of space

Is there a door handle that might be an exit, are the fire exit signs real, if I follow them where will I end up? Every thought makes things worse, my heart is pounding and my stomach churns as the real fear of losing control gets closer, try this door, another room, another room, another room...

Here is the reception and the security bloke, I try to calmly ask “ How do I get out?”
“Straight ahead and through the door.”
This corridor is not straight and the door opens into a sort of bin storage area, do I go through the fire exit over there and possibly into a back street. It doesn't look right. I have to go back but at least I remember how I got here this time. “Yes trust me” he says encouragingly. So back into the bin room I spot a bright sliver of light under the door.

Now out in the familiar Tate corridor I remember my intention was to make a drawing in there, so feeling brave now, I almost liked the idea of being lost inside. I step back in and note each door as I walk through but after the fourth door I have had enough fear returns and I quickly retrace my steps. The attendant outside looked indifferent as I re-emerged so quickly.
I realise how easily I had ignored the fire exit signs when looking for a way out, probably because they are accepted information and never an actual part of the art?

The fear of being lost in there completely transformed my experience of an art exhibition and memories of Tate Britain. Now back to the shop!