Conceptual Integration and Blending

 Conceptual Integration or Conceptual Blending is a theory of cognition developed by Fauconnier & Turner which takes elements or parts and their relationships and re-structures them in a sub-conscious process. It attempts to create a new unitary account via the transmitting of the parts through time and space. 

It may be said to re-contextualise by placing or viewing the pose in a new or unfamiliar context, which may suggest to the beholder a different interpretation. 

The emergence and evolution of my 'Cubisme' of the past years has been fairly fundamental to this process. Viewing a pose from a number of different points simultaneously, by moving myself around the studio and including these views in the one drawing. I have been lucky to be able to experiment with this approach in venues which have ample space to move around in. An alternative to this is to have the model take up a number of positions by, for example, turning over on to her back, then her side, facing you and then facing away. Perhaps the most sensual and seductive of this is Picasso's La Dormeuse (Sleeping Nude). Here it is, and there is a most informative analysis and discussion by Charles Stuckey on the Phillips Auction House website:

Picasso's exploratory and searching lines can be seen as not only parts seem to move their positions during the process but the whole pose appears to have moved within the space of the paper over the time of making the drawing. 

So Picasso and Cubism have joined me in my journey. And so has Hans Bellmer. His quality of line, but perhaps more so his Picabian transparency, have become aspects which I have consistently referred to as I explore my own art and come up with insights which I seem to need some confirmation of their validity by finding examples which I feel have a relevance to that which appears in my drawings. 

Here, from my note-book, is my crude reproduction (purely a reminder for me), of one of Bellmer's drawings:

Although it is untitled in catalogues in places it has an accompanying highly descriptive name Cephalopod. This is with reference to the octopus in which all the gangly limbs lead back to a central point of the composition. 

So lets start to post my drawings from July 22nd and July 29th, and perhaps note examples of the above two approaches:

July 22nd: the model is Paul (no, not the gardener from last week, but the Paul new to me on July 8th). He started his series of poses by emerging on his hands and knees from a box, then proceeded to assume a number of positions alongside and upon the box ending up on his back on top of the box. I know you will not be immediately informed by my drawings of the overall form of each pose, but you may be able (after a time) be able to work out what position Paul was taking.

This final drawing I would claim is one of my Cephalopods (well, this is what I will call them from now on).

July 29th: It is Shelley!  An inspirational muse! And posing on a plinth about one and a half metres from my easel, about at my eye level from my seated position.

 Something was different today. Just had a fairly hectic and enjoyable week with grandchildren, daughters and their husbands. Lots of food from the vegetable garden, lots of drinking, and not having seen them much over the past 18 months of covid restrictions. And then a quiet drive, the 40 miles, across the border to Stroud. I described my feeling to a colleague that "I felt I had come to an oasis of tranquility". So a certain relaxed state of mind was present as I started my response to the first pose.

And I do believe something was different today in the way I was feeling about my art, the very relaxed way in which I started each drawing by just selecting a part which caught my attention and then giving very little conscious attention to what followed next and how it juxtaposed with that which had gone before. Compositions were constructed via a force and direction which I seemed to have little conscious connection with. Obviously I did every so often think about what I should focus on next; should I include the straight edge of the plinth; shall I place all the hands and feet together at the base of the drawing; there is a triangular distance space which I must capture defined by arm, leg and torso which will go deep into the paper, etc., etc. But most of the time I was much more conscious of pulling back from making any decisions and just letting myself freewheel into the time allocated to each pose and freewheel into the space within, beyond and around my paper. I was aware however, perhaps more than usual, of the back-and-forth energy flows between myself and the muse. Shelley contributes so much. Today she really struggled in a number of the poses. Not only with numb-dead limbs from her contortions but with the overall ever changing temperature in the studio as the air-conditioner attempted to grapple with the extreme solar heating coming through the roof-lights. 

And as the morning progressed I experienced a new sensation and insight. And this was something really quite new. I began to think that I was touching on something which was superceding anything which had gone before in my life-drawing journey. Previously, and quite often when I felt a breakthrough had taken place, I usually recorded the event, via my self-analytical process, on this blog. Reading back through the posts one will come across these announcements. And I make frequent attempts to generate a descriptive vocabulary at the time. But these adjectives change over time. And they change because as a 'process artist' the way I work evolves. 

Yet, there are some constants. And there are some things which re-occur. And at times I have the sensation that I have been here before. BUT in the main there has been an evolutionary development in my art, with moments of revolutionary change. BUT today, I sense it was different. And the reason I make this claim is that during this morning I developed a gut feeling that all previous and earlier revolutions had been put into perspective and were quite minor in significance. 

To describe and generate a vocabulary about this latest event and feeling about my art is far too early. I talked this over with Paul Fowler, our mentor and tutor and organiser of the Thursday morning life-drawing sessions at Pegasus Art in Stroud, and gained from him confirmation that something special was taking place. 

So here are the results in the form of two-handed graphite drawings on A1 portrait format cartridge paper:

I want to conclude this posting with some notes from my note-book which I jotted down whilst listening to Charles Stuckey's talk on Picasso's La Dormeuse. This exercise preceded the latest drawings with Shelley so their content may well have been a contribution to my claim that a significantly radical move has taken place:

• the searching has a graphic power in itself
• the drawing reveals one's own activity as an artist
• graphic appeal and power are to do with the energy of all the graphic lines that compose her body
• distort the figure so that you can see many sides of the body at the same time
• how to get most of her into the picture as possible
• leave in a state of incomplete resolution - to show the stages of the creative process
• when I include a background line I place the figure against the ground (context), when there are no background lines the figure is free of the ground (free of context) and assumes their own place within space
• the drawing becomes a 'setting of time' (Paul Fowler has talked of this), I see her body, her buttocks, breasts, arms, as they 'exist in the time' it took me to draw them
• the calmness of the model (the pose) and the frantic attempt, the hyper excitement, of the artist, rendering how the model appears to me, and how I am able to project my feelings on to the paper

A concluding consideration:

There is a genre known as hyperrealism: a definition of which is:

• features are exaggerated
• scale is altered
• objects are placed in startling unnatural relationships

This is what I do, but this is only part of my story. 

A 'narrative' joins 'the process'

 Quite an extraordinary day today! It is my third 'real' life-drawing experience after the long period of isolation. Also I've been looking back over recent works, and attempting to come up with some sort of thesaurus which says something about my 'process' (see last posting):

assemblages; fragments; divergences; remix; singlearities; manipulation; multiples; fractured; randomness; scavenging; combinatoric rearrangement; re-contextualise; conceptual integration; random juxtapositioning; de-construction and re-construction; collage; distortion; fractured; fragments; juxtaposing the parts; mutilated; dismembered; distorted; surrealistic; making a drawing with the laws of chance; morphing; transduction; 

All the above, I believe, may be used, perhaps in relation to a specific drawing or a period of drawing, to describe the process of how my drawings come together on the paper and are quite different and independent of my 'spatiality' world in which I use the now very familiar terms, such as: superimpositioning; overlap; transparancy; penetration; depth; the 4th dimension; complexity; layering; differing scales; spatial entanglement; 

I will try to explain today's set up: Paul Fowler had previously designed a zoom sessions in which the model enacted a storey line (I did not take part in this): sitting at a table she received a letter, the contents of which upset her and increasingly caused her distress, and she became animated, the letter became crumpled, her cup was spilled, and her despair resulted in a distorted entanglement with the table and chair. However, today the original female model was unavailable so our long standing Paul (the gardener, not the same Paul as last week) took her place. 

We were to follow the usual format of 5x30 minute poses, to take us through the morning. In each pose Paul was to act out a stage of the narrative.

So, I did five drawings, and right from the start I realised that a number of aspects could give continuity thro' the series: e.g. the spatial and form relationship between the model's leg and the leg of the table.

Here are the five drawings:

Nos 1: Paul's  right leg and the table leg with me focussing on the space bewteen the two. I then superimposed the hand holding the letter. Quite calm and restful at this point

Nos 2:The letter is still held but in the other hand and the head is in the hand as the content of the letter is responded to. 

Nos 3: Distress sets in. The head drops to the table and is buried in the letter. The leg become more stretched out with slight tension in the toes.

Nos 4: The chair slides back as Paul sinks to the floor, head further lowered and arm gaining some support on the edge of the table. The letter becomes crumpled and squeezed. A cup is knocked over.

Nos 5: Finally Paul ends up under the table and gains some support by tightly gripping the table leg. Crumpled letter and mug have ended up on the floor.

"the process of drawing results equally in a drawing of process"

 I am a process artist!

Have been for many years , and often talked about this on this blog.

In a conversation last week, on my return to 'real' life-drawing, I claimed I had little interest in the end product. How it turned out was not particularly important to me. What I am really interested in are the experiential aspects of the following:

• the sequence in which parts of the pose gain my interest, and how these then juxtapose in the drawing
• the diversity in the relationship between artist and muse: dialogue, communication, the sense of sharing the event
• being within a spatial continuity which embraces my mind and perceptual processes, my motor actions which place marks on my paper, the space within, beyond and around my paper, and this then extending to embrace the model and the returning messages she is sending [notice I've started with myself but I could equally argue that the model is the real starting point of any kinetic activity, and perhaps always is].

Today I was at the second real life-drawing sessions after my Covid isolation, and for some reason felt to home in on my love of process. I had yesterday come across the quote which titles this posting. I've thought this for many years but the wording seemed to encapsulate the essence of my approach. In addition to this, for me, the model Paul, was new, and immediately I knew I was reacting differently. I have not yet photographed my drawings and so have not looked at them since placing them in my folio at the end of the session. A peculiar feeling as I am actually unsure as what to expect. You see, I did not take a good look at them, at the time, as I was so attempting to be somewhat conscious and perhaps understand a little of the process I had been thro' each time. 

So, I will be photographing them, taking a good look at them, and upon posting then perhaps saying a few words......... Watch this space!

The return of the real!

Yes! 

At last!

It's Thursday July 1st 2021 and probably some eighteen months since I was in the presence of a live life-model.

Somewhat apprehensive, not nervous, but unsure of the experience ahead of me. Spent some time over the past days looking back through this recording of my life-drawing journey. Why? To make reconnections if necessary. Not really necessary, as I know where I have been. Some of my drawings from 2016 stood out. Two special ladies, Natalie and Robin, curled up together in double-model poses, recollected for me the special relationship which it is possible to create not only between two models but between the artist and the muse. At this time I was well into my two-handed drawing method and technique, exploring within the depths of my paper by squiggles and searching mark-making how I was perceiving the human forms before me. But not only exploring the anatomical structures but at the same time delving into my perceptions and experiencing entering into the extraordinary channels of communication within the spatiality of the life-drawing setting (I've talked of this many time over the years ......... the symbiosis of model/artist dialogue, the artist entering into the depths of the paper/canvas, the shared and supportive culture created in the life-drawing studio, the meditative process of life-drawing itself, having an extraordinary mentor, etc.)

We are relocated up in the roof of the four storey19thC mill which houses Pegasus Art in Stroud. Climbing the staircase up into this space for the first time was a truly welcoming experience. The quality of light and the much greater floor area looked good. We were reduced in number due to Covid restrictions. Eight of us, and our mentor Paul Fowler, and then across the studio I met with Shelly. Her presence was an instant uplift to me and a complete restructuring of my hesitant anticipatory expectations. Why? You only have to scan back thro' this blog over the past three or so years to appreciate the part the Shelly has played in inspirational contributions to my journey.

So, off we went.