Reflective Process (ongoing)

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'The Times' 20/06/08

The source photograph from which this drawing was transcribed was chosen for its essential visual attractiveness (the colours, chiefly reflected blue sky & golden-green foliage, are quite beautiful), although it is also possible in this instance, through the technique applied to its process, to once again make specific reference to the photo-based painting of Gerhard Richter.


Richard Estes 'Double Self'
acrylic/canvas 1976


Gerhard Richter 'Nurses'
oil/canvas 1965

Although such an image might superficially suggest a close affinity with such a photorealist work as Richard Estes's 'Double Self', the original, with reflected imagery overlaying that of the figure, or ‘portrait’, enabled the transcription of the drawing to involve a process of two distinct elements: the underdrawing of a ground subsequently worked back into with an eraser to create a degree of form through tonal subtleties, & then further scored into, swiping across the picture plane with the eraser – negative creating positive – being analogous to Richter’s technique of horizontally brushing across the still-wet surface of his photographically-based paintings to blur the image &, so doing, bring together figurative & abstract painting in one combined image, creating an analogy between them to dissolve the usual binary opposition of these artforms. This method then serves to foreground the act of painting itself, creating visual texture &, as the image thus loses a degree of detail & definition through the blurring process, drawing attention away from the ostensible subject matter in order to allow the act of painting to communicate itself.

This, essentially, is the intention informing the transcribed drawing too, to, reflexively, communicate most directly & primarily the process of its creation & realisation, & the 'abstract' nature of the work over & above any ostensible subject matter, image content, that might result.


Interesting to note that, sharing the cover of 'The Painting of Modern Life' exhibition catalogue (with reference being made to Kaja Silverman's essay 'Photography By Other Means' which features Richter in particular, the painter Johannes Kahrs states that 'the photographic image (which remains a document to some kind of reality other than painting) becomes more physical, more personal, when translated into painting', something I feel also applies to drawing, the act of, the process of the making of marks, & the series of drawings constituting this current Project.

Soundtrack:


The Smiths
homemade compilation including 'The Smiths', 'Meat is Murder' &, in essence, 'Hatful of Hollow'; 'The Queen is Dead', 'Strangeways, Here We Come' & 'Louder Than Bombs'
'Test Match Special' denouement of Eng/NZ ODI, 25/06/08

As it so happened that Morrissey featured amongst the series of Guardian booklets featuring 'Great Lyricists' & Tim Lott's introductory essay suggested that the words should be heard, in conjunction with the music, rather than merely appreciated as poetry, so a listen to The Smiths became necessary. For all their humour, their bathos, their oft sublime depictions of the passions & quiet desperations of the mundanities of provincial lives less-than-perfect, still Mozzer's lyrics are made better still accomapnied by Johnny Marr's musical genius: the music The Smiths left behind in the wake of their short, brilliant, comet-like burst through the mid-1980s remains uniquely wonderful, 'Meat is Murder' as an album particularly so but so very many of the songs, emotionally involving, sonically arresting in their sheer strangeness, otherness, a quality of their time & still now. Fabulous.