Drawings

A drawing is part object and part image, revealing and expressive because of its contradictions.  The absurdity of careful scribbled marks contrasted with our intuitive readings gives wonderful opportunities to explore awareness.

 

It's been a lifelong fascination,  a medium for experiment and development of ideas, and a favourite subject is the human form. 

I've been teaching life drawing for many years, and recent work (2008 drawings) comes from a delight in the use of colour in drawing, not to represent but to describe form, movement and luminosity  -  these are mostly done with bright pastels on large black paper  -  large for me anyway, having spent many years making tiny jewel-like objects.


These drawings also relate to recent wood carvings (2008 sculpture) in their carefully contrived sketchiness, their active surface. A primary concern in the drawing is using colour to create a reading of depth, of sculptural form, whereas the process of the carving uses light and shadow in the textures to develop a reading of movement, of gesture.

The images in the Previous Drawings gallery are varied and in no particular order   -  figures, natural forms, some fantastical and others intended as satirical.  These last fit a category I think of as Poetic Insults  -  an explanation is with each one, or the title should be enough.

"Poetic Insults" applies to several of the sculptures and pieces of jewellery as well, it seems to be a nice title for an ongoing series of ideas that are responses to observed situations and events and explorations of ways to experience them.  They're a bit like political cartoons, satirical or humorous, aimed at a specific target but where the aesthetics and wit hopefully counterbalance cynicism.


However, as with any art object, they should be able to exist and be expressive without the constraint of an intended meaning, and certainly without intention to be offensive beyond its original target.  

Other Sites: Drawing Term Papers and Custom Writings