Drawing a Blank #5

graphite & watercolour/30x20cm

Being the latest in the sequence of watercolour drawings processed from the subject-object matter of folded, creased & lightly crumpled blank sheets of standard A4 paper, represented on exact 1:1 scale (laboriously plotted), the image, with its all-over surface of non-hierarchical incidental visual detail, thus coinciding with the physical limits of the picture plane.
Once again, there’s that play, the employment of the device, of the flat representation of what was originally a flat plane subsequently transformed into something of a low-relief three-dimensional object, the drawing being a record of the fugitive action of natural light upon the undulations of its surface, of the subtle tonal gradations of the marks made upon the once uninflected sheet by the folding & crumpling process.

Becoming more deeply involved in this particular body of work, as it seems to be in the process of becoming, however slowly-evolving (taking into account specific seasonal factors, pertaining to the limited availability of natural daylight in which to work) & thus far production-light, certain art-historical correspondences emerge in which context(s) the drawings might be situated, even if only coincidentally &, not unusually, superficially.
In the interests of a certain integrity, at least of overriding personal aesthetics, all such artists & their work have featured previously, either specifically ‘in relation’ or otherwise as being of interest.

Other than an aforementioned similarity, at least, particularly, at the outset of the project, to some of Vija Celmins' wonderful drawings, of enveloped letters, photographs & images torn from magazines, & the historical tradition of the realistic representation of fabrics folded & draped, the first such example with which to consider something of an affinity is that of Kees Goudzwaard, & the artist’s paintings based on the subject-object matter of various paper & masking tape constructions of a variety of dimensions, all of which are represented, in oil on canvas, on a 1:1 scale, & include numerous subtly modulated grey & ‘white’ examples of.
Many of Goudwaard’s images, which maintain a compelling tension between trompe l’oeil realism & abstract design, also feature something of a grid structure, to whatever fairly rigorous or looser degree, by virtue of the use of the linear element of the strips of tape, another compositional device which links them in some manner to the drawings of creased & crumpled paper, the original objects upon which such are based are initially folded into such a formal pattern, of course.

The horizontal & vertical structure provide by the purposeful creases, & other accidental incidental diagonals & ‘facets’ of the crumple-inflected surfaces, might be considered as being not-too distant from aspects of archetypal Cubist composition, of course, a feature which generally haunts proceeding here, whilst the use of paper as subject-object matter also bears a relation to collage.

Obviously there’s something about any work utilizing the grid & surface modulations of whites & greys that might recall, generally & a number of particular examples of, the work of the familiar figure of Jasper Johns & also Robert Ryman’s ‘white paintings’ (although both are more usually associated with the palpable physicality & sensuousness of their surfaces, even Ryman's smooth ones) but, it occurred, ‘riffingly’, that there also might be something of a distant echo of Vilhelm Hammershoi, whose contemplative compositions are characterized by an habitual, exquisitely-realised muted tonality & overall ‘greyness’, & frequently include the cell-like details of domestic interior architectural features such as windows, doors, etc.

As ever, there’s such a richness to & wealth of art history that the occurrence of contextualizing correspondences are inevitable & unavoidable, but such are always welcome & more often than not informative & instructive.


Soundtrack:


She & Him 'Volume Two'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Sparklehorse 'It's a Wonderful Life'
Jesca Hoop 'Hunting My Dress'

And so the new Moon Wiring Club release - the CD but one aspect of the 'Tabby bundle' that constitutes its whole - arrived, ahead of expectations, to be discovered sheltering, by something of a spooky coincidence although not, perhaps, particularly unusually for something of a feline nature, underneath the car...


More will surely follow upon the subject of the richness of the sonic & visual wonders to experienced within this cornucopia of delights, suffice for now to report that the first hearing of the CD during a misty, damp & darkening autumn afternoon provided much of the anticipated entertainment & more developments besides...

Drawing Under the Influence...

graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm

A drawing made directly under the influence of the recently mentioned ‘The Primacy of Drawing’, & more specifically the serendipitous illustrated reference to the work of Vija Celmins contained therein.


Now, mention of Celmins’ exquisite, labour-intensive graphite still life drawings of almost-flat objects (postcards, fragments of magazine pages featuring reproduced photographs, envelopes) & various natural surfaces (desert- & moonscapes, etc) has occurred hereabouts on previous occasions, again in direct relation to the ‘roadkill’ & road surface series of drawings (indeed, here at the very outset of such), as a most relevant example for the contextualization of.

Here, the piece of paper featuring image content as represented in the Celmins drawing bears, it occurred, a relation to my habitual practice of making a photocopy of any found ‘roadkill’ object as the initial stage of the record-keeping & representational process, which, it also occurred, in an epiphanic moment, could itself provide the subject/object matter for a drawing, which, thus inspired & without further ado (in the best traditions), proceeded accordingly.

Folding & lightly crumpling the piece of paper (edited down from the original A4 sheet) produced a suitably low relief ‘three dimensional’ object which, its surface described by natural light, provided an incident-rich source of subtle tonal variations existing in relational dialogue to the familiar image of a flattened, crumpled ‘roadkill’ can printed upon it.

Note also that the folding process resulted in the formation of an eight-celled grid, a further connection with abiding concerns, & which directly influenced the drawing process, which was largely carried out cell-by-cell with a few overall finishing revisions.

Also in relation to previous considerations (particularly as relating to the 2008 drawing Project concerned with the transcription of newspaper photographs), such a drawing features multiple levels of representation & again, by way more of serendipitous coincidence than anything else, there’s a correspondence with the early summer photographs of uncrumpled paper balls, returned to sheet form & subsequently having rudimentary grids drawn upon them: a sequence of many pleasing connections that might inspire & enable further exploratory dialogues...

There's also, from a theoretical viewpoint, something of a recurrence of Michael Bracewell's niggling notion of 'the dense aesthetic values of re-mediation' (coined in relation to Richard Forster's compelling series of drawings, richly processed from his own original photographic sources, of the sea), which surely begs a more profound investigation, particularly in the light of little else in the way of consideration being published, at least, on the subject of what seems an important concept.

Gritty (Photo)Realism

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

This particular drawing owes its existence to something of a ‘back to the future’ situation occurring as a result of a recent epiphany, whereby various strands of source material, creative thinking, research & visual influences & references might usefully be combined to service a potentially substantial drawing project.

The source image dates from November 2007, photographed then & posted under the title ‘Pop Art Roadkill’ coined to describe an aspect of its content which was/is additional to its ground, an extensive number of examples of which had been recorded as visual research prior to this.

This original material – my own photographs of a local phenomenon of ‘double black lines’ road markings (by way of brief explication, correctively over-painted double yellow lines erroneously applied) - & thoughts of using it as the basis for drawing & painting dates back some three years now (already), with numerous examples blogged & contextualized, primarily within the idiom of Modernist painting, in February & March of 2006. Subsequently, in the November of the following year, a small series of 'all-over' drawings was processed from a selection of these photographs, being an initial, exploratory foray into both the practice of working from pre-existing, ‘readymade’ images (habitually, then, being a long-standing stickler for working from life) & the mark-making possibilities that the particular source might offer, with especial reference to the example & influence of the drawings of Jasper Johns.

Shortly afterwards came the chancing-upon of the traffic-flattened aluminium drinks cans - ‘roadkill’ in the contemporary parlance - at the same roadsides as exhibited the double black line markings: duly recorded, posted & contextualized within the realm of visual art (Warhol & Johns providing primary examples) for further reference, as a development of the original theme.

And then began last year’s project of working from print media-derived photographic sources which has developed & held sway into this year & unto the present...

However, the idea of working from this body of source material never having been abandoned as such, & following on from the seeds of inspiration replanted by the recent discovery of Richard Forster’s series of seascape drawings (see this post), the particular catalyst in bringing all the various strands together has been the work of Vija Celmins, via the excellent, handsome Phaidon-published monograph on the artist & her career, recently purchased & in the process of being studied intensely for both its image content & the fascinating accompanying essays & interview transcriptions.

The visual analogies between, in particular, Celmins’ exquisite graphite drawings - displaying such richness of textural incident & subtlety of tonal control - of, variously, still lifes of enveloped letters & images torn from magazines ('almost-flat' objects, as are, of course, the compressed roadkill cans), & photo-derived expanses of oceans, star-scattered night skies, &, most pertinently, stony desert floors, & my source photographs of the tarmacked roadsides (with attendant discarded consumer 'roadkill' & without) are obvious, & compelling to such a degree that the hope is that the influence of Celmins' work, along with that of Forster & Johns, & such other painters as Robert Ryman, will prove suitably inspiring to instigate a profound exploration through drawing, mark-making, of my source material & any issues that might arise from such.

Returning to the drawing with which this post opens, an interesting aspect of its process was that much of the detail of the texture of the road surface was interpreted from the source photograph, being suggested & led not by direct reference to the image with the aim of faithful reproduction of its specific appearance - apart from a selection of positional markers & reference to general appearances - but, rather, the initial marks made upon the surface of the paper, building up, layer upon layer, to create the form of the drawing (as representation).

Soundtrack:


Black Box Recorder 'England Made Me'
Sundays 'Reading, Writing & Arithmetic'
Sparklehorse 'It's Wonderful Life'
Lambchop 'How I Quit Smoking' & 'What Another Man Spills'
Belle & Sebastian 'The Life Pursuit'

Coincidental to a couple of items on this list, a word in praise of BBC4's fascinating documentary 'Do It Yourself: the Story of Rough Trade Records' (upon which label both the Sundays' album & 'The Life Pursuit' were released): so much great, challenging music made available through various means to the world, from Scritti Politti, Cabaret Voltaire, Robert Wyatt to The Smiths, from noble, idealistic beginnings through various political & financial power struggles to bankruptcy to renaissance, utterly compelling & rather 'Proustian' too.
Featuring as it does so many of such bands & artists & those on similar, related labels of the era, I really must read Simon Reynolds' wonderful history of post-punk, 'Rip It Up and Start Again' too, especially as I seem to be particularly immersed in the sonic aesthetic of those times...