The Question of Drawing
When Certainty is on Offer Make a Drawing
I started and stopped about 5 posts this week. I then tossed in the writing towel and just started drawing. There is a lot of certainty on display these days with pitched battles on every subject imaginable with nuance and middle ground in short supply. It seemed like the perfect time to cross hatch some lines between the black and white. Opening my sketchbook, is not like immersing myself in Grand Theft Auto, I’m not a passenger in an immersive game environment. I’m not arguing a position, and I’m not unconsciously scratching marks on a page, hoping for the best. The image builds a logic that is sourced from the subject and my hand and the text provides another mirror to understand the image.
The image above must have come from the recent time spent with an aging family member, overlapped by my own feelings about the passage of decades and seeing the journey of time change me as I arrive at these stations in my life.
Maybe an appropriate soundtrack for this weeks events, Games Without Frontiers, by Peter Gabriel inspired another spread in my sketchbook…
”If looks could kill, they probably will, Games without Frontiers, war without tears.”
Maybe a drawing is serving its purpose when it stirs a question rather than declares an answer. We can’t have a conversation with a bullhorn.
This final sketchbook spread was the lead for one of the posts that I abandoned. Maybe something better left to my developing book on drawing. My feelings about the skeleton may be a little too inside baseball for this weekly post. They are certainly passionate, so maybe…
This week, I put ball point pen to paper rather than struggle through more cursor on screen and I feel a relief that all the clamour and cacophony of news, and opinion has been drawn over and put in it’s place, away from my minds eye and not in my hands as I turn the page to next week.
Have a wonderful week with drawing everyone.