I'm Back

Yesterday, August 5th, was the 5th return visit to Paul Fowler's life-drawing studio at Pegasus Art in Stroud across Offa's Dyke over in England, and although I had felt quite good about the 4 previous sessions, today and 24 hours later, following my photographing of my drawings and consequently taking a good look at them for the first time, my initial analysis is that I feel I am moving. Here are the notes recorded in my note-book this morning:

There is:  a theme;  a characteristic;  a way of engaging;  which can be identified in these works.

• I am eliminating from the drawing the central part of the pose.
• I am focusing my attention on parts of the pose which I see as 'attractive', 'significant' and 'seductive to draw'.
• The product (to me) encapsulates the essence of the pose - emphasises and celebrates the fundamental energy of the pose.
• Yet: my approach to each drawing remains a gamble, not knowing what will end up on the paper. 

In order to achieve these successful outcomes (and this is what I am claiming these drawings are) Am I relying on my 'skills', 'abilities', 'my attitude of freedom in a self-consciously unconstrained process'? If I am, then perhaps at long last I have arrived at something new. I have arrived at somewhere new. And my reference here to 'somewhere' new is to do with my recent conversations with Paul Fowler that I am engaging with concept of 'time' within the processes of my perceptual response, and with the concept of 'space' within the 4th dimensional kinetic dialogue taking place between me, the muse, the paper, and the mark-making which is itself a physical record of all these interactions, connections and meeting points.

[OK. You have read something similar to this before on my blog. And I do admit to similar self-congratulatory celebrations. If this is so then what I am claiming is that my journey remains an evolutionary one. It changes, and keeps changing. Perhaps the fact that I get so excited by the changes is that what appears on my paper is so often unexpected and a complete surprise. However, I could also argue, and could cite numerous examples, that in relation to my claim that I am in many ways a process artist the changes are most significantly taking place in my ways of thinking, in my ways of perceiving, and in my ways selecting. So I will now post the drawings from yesterday after having taken a good look at them and yes I have  surprised myself, but I'm also feeling good about how I think I am thinking]

Our model is Paul the gardener. Very familiar to me as I have drawn him over many years. He is quite extraordinary: on the one hand he has a healthy body from handling chain saws and other garden machinery, and a contrasting feminine side which allows him to project poetry into his poses. He is amusing, totally relaxed, and attempts extraordinary poses around which he is fully conscious of the contribution he is making to the life-drawing event.

In this first pose he is up on a plinth with his head supported in his right hand. I was about one metre from him, seated low at my easel. I immediately knew what I wanted to do. Two parts of the pose hit me. Overall it was the Rodinesque thinker. But the head in the hand and the foot on the edge of the plinth. I started with the hand and an outline of the head. Then on to the toes and the way they came over the edge of the plinth. At this point I had no idea of making a connection between the two, or as I call it morphing the two parts. I recall recalling previous instances of morphing hands and feet, and so this is what took place. The outcome: two selected parts of the pose which when brought together said to me what the pose was about: head on hand, foot on plinth, gravity/weight/support. And a drawing quite bizarre and amusing. I  felt a good start to the morning had taken place.

A long horizontal pose. Not sure why, but I placed the left side of the pose, the buttocks, and dangling right leg, starting on the right of the paper. Then the shoulder and hanging head, which was over to my right came in on the left of the drawing. I, at no point considered the creation of the space, into the depths of the composition, between these two halves of the pose. But a space it is. And the line of the plinth as it enters into the composition from the bottom right of the drawing introduces a strong directional perspective into this central space.

 

In this next pose Paul lies across the plinth. My response is to focus on two key points of contact between the forms of his body and the lines of the plinth.. I start with the hand, his fingers coming towards me, and the close relationship with his head. I suggest the line of his neck, but unsure exactly where this should be. So I go to the other end of the pose and place the weight of his buttocks on to the plinth, but I am very careful not to connect together the lines of these two parts of the plinth. I then have a strong need to resolve the issue of the line indicating the back of his neck. By itself it is somewhat isolated and appears unsure about what it is doing. I felt it needed something going on around it to give it some context and making it more of an event within the composition. And I then become aware of the fingers of his other hand beyond his neck. I need to adjust my position in order to see them clearly, in fact I had to stand up to look over his neck to see clearly what was there and then moved my easel and chair (my cubism again), and in they go. A successful outcome.

Sitting on the plinth, legs dangling down on two sides, head leaning forward and clasped in hands. His right leg is on the other side of the plinth so is hidden from my view. His left leg is directly in front of me. 

There is a beam across the studio and Paul climbs on to it, lying on his front so that arms and legs dangle down. But after about 15 minutes it became very painful for him.

And here is one of my 'Cephalopod' responses. But with a difference.  The final form does not appear in a free space, unlike the last drawing from last week. This one has context. It has grounding. I could not resist the hand clutching on to the beam, and once this had entered the narrative I just had to bring the body and the other hand to make contact with their ground supports.