I recently came across Leonora Carrington, an amazing person and artist, and here is a quote from her which, to me, places emphasis on, and helps to explain something of the complexity of my perceptual engagement with a pose, the outcome of which I often use different scales in the same drawing:
"the task for the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope"
This looking at detail, and then the whole, and then to perhaps a greater degree of detail, then somewhere else at a mid-scale, means I am bringing together a number of individual drawings of different parts of a pose into a final single composition. Inevitably, in order to include perhaps five or six parts, many of which are drawn large, means that overlap and superimposition takes place, depth and perspective are incorporated, all resulting in an enhanced spatiality. Ambiguity and uncertainty often result and the beholder is more likely to be challenged to understand and unravel that which they are presented with.
Here are the five outcomes from five 30 minute poses by a new model over at Paul Fowler's 'Extreme Poses' in Stroud on the morning of August 25th.
Pause for thought:
So, if I now place my perceptual gymnastics, of jumping between the parts and the whole, a sort of moving between close and far away, between using my telescopic mechanism and my microscopic mechanism, if I place this alongside my cubism, in which I may include simultaneous views of the same part from different view points, or perhaps drawing one side of a pose and then moving my easel to draw the other side and juxtaposing them on the same piece of paper, we are entering quite a complex spatial process. It is a process which can never be planned simply because it is so fluid and relies on almost a random sequence of selection. How do the parts then become a new whole? I just say by magic.
the magical spatial process:
a) that taking place within me, within my mind influenced by my perceptual processes, my history (and probably many other things),
b) the emergence on the paper of drawings of parts of a pose but each taking its place within the depths of the space defined by the edges of the paper, yet having a potential of infinite perspective, and
c) there is me, my paper, and the model....that's all really. Quite simple. But then one introduces: the space between me (eye and brain) and my paper, within which I move and perform my motor actions; the space between me and the model, through which passes a complex two-way dialogue; the space between me and the model within which the paper captures and records marks on its 2D surface whist at the same time representing 3D space and itself performing spatially but also recording the 4th dimensionality of the whole process over time.
I've included the following insight before in my blog but can't at the moment recall its source. It says so much about how I view my engagement in my art, as a process artist:
THE PROCESS OF DRAWING RESULTS EQUALLY IN A DRAWING OF PROCESS
In other words, for me, the drawing is not a means to an end. For me it is never a sketch for an idea for a later painting. The process, i.e. the making of the drawing, is the end in itself. I have claimed in the past that a drawing can record how the drawing is made, how it is constructed, how it can tell the story of its making. I also anticipate that it will say something about me, how I approach my art, how I see my relationship with the human body, how I am able to identify with and relate my 'art of the nude' to that of eminent and significant historical and contemporary artists.
