Industrious Correspondence

Today the opposite of tomato is 'a cup of tea and your insights'

(Re)presenting here a second drawing based upon, shall we say, aspects of A & the influential nature of her contributions generally & thus, con- & sub-sequently, to recent proceedings here at TOoT.

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

As with the first example, an element of narrative is present & indeed motivates the process both of image construction &, in formal terms, mark making. A it was who provided both the source digital photograph of her own feet (the represented print of which that also serves as the foundation for the previous drawing) &, as one of a sequence of such delightful & dialogically significant visual gifts, the rather wonderful postcard featuring a representation of the cover of the Penguin paperback 'Creativity in Industry', expertly & exquisitely designed by David Pelham, a model of succinct perfection (images of this particular card & more in the series, from the box set of 100 'Postcards from Penguin', may be viewed here).

Rather obviously, the image content of this particular object then suggested the inclusion of the pencils as objects within the drawing, relating directly to the drawing process, the habitual industry of which is apparent in the mark-made nature of the surface, with the explicit correspondence between the represented scribble as featured on the card & that forming the ground of the drawing.

The miniature spanner is an example of something very familiar to proceedings at TOoT in terms of source material in that it is a found object, in this particular case discovered at my feet, upon the floor of the train being taken home from a day spent in the company of A: its nature, as a hand tool (like the pencil), seems to fit nicely too, of course, with the notion of industry, manufacture, etc, as promoted by the postcard.

Finally, the dots lightly erased into the surface provide a further aspect of correspondence, of shared visual syntax, between A & the artist.

To allow for a little contextualization, as is habitual, the scribbled nature of the represented 'smoke' within the design reproduced upon the postcard, & the deliberate act, the process, of representing this, as carefully, measured & faithfully as possible, in & as an aspect of the drawing, brought to mind examples of the work of Alan Brooks, with which I had been familiar for some years, indeed since one such was encountered as a selection featured within that seminal John Moores Painting Prize 20 exhibition back in 1997.


Alan Brooks 'untitled (blue)' acrylic on canvas 183x183cm


Alan Brooks 'Fill (II)' acrylic on canvas 183x183cm

In these examples, & numerous others besides, the artist has taken a found, discarded small scale original (of, e.g., 'Post-it' note dimensions) quickly-scribbled doodle-drawing & transposed it, in paint, to a considerably larger canvas, with the gestural mark-making of the source reproduced, represented, in deliberate fashion in exact detail, preserving the energentic appearance of the original 'image' whilst encouraging a much more contemplative study of its form & the obsessive, controlled process of its making, an intriguing perceptual contrast. Interestly, a study of Alan Brooks' recent drawing practice reveals a series of A4-scale pencil drawings faithfully representing photographic sources, the subject matter mostly featuring portraits of 'influential' authors with also a selection of artists in their studios also included amongst the corpus, a tangential correspondence with my own 2008 drawing Project, sourced & represented from found print media images, here at TOoT & as has occurred subsequently on occasion since, albeit without quite the same rigour or concentration upon such serial subject matter. One considers, of course, that, for all their different appearance (one might say illustrating the hoary old & irrelevant 'abstract' & 'figurative' dichotomy), both of these aspects of Brooks' practice are engaged with the same essential process of the representation of an original image.

Soundtrack:


She & Him 'Volume Two'
Luna 'Best of' Mark Mulcahy
'In Pursuit of Your Happiness' & 'Smilesunset' Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Dvorak 'Dumky' Piano Trio
Nick Drake 'Made to Love Magic'