I'm touching on something special here...........

 

 

Me and Callie on April 27th

 

"Through the metamorphic transformation of one object into another he finds a new potential inherent in the nude and in its ability to gradually become something else"

I introduce my latest five drawings with another sentence from my autobiographical review.

Me and Shelley on April 20th

 

"He deconstructs and fuses anatomical parts in a manner that resembles a mystifying puzzle and the human body is transformed into a fresh compilation and given a new meaning"  

This is a quote from my autobiographical review of my art from a few postings ago. In compiling this review I, for the first time, stood back outside myself and looked into my art as though it was from another person. These drawings have emerged following this self-examination and may, as a result, be different. Are they?

Two images to think about.........

 ...... and relate to my drawings......... 

Both of these I have cropped from the digital photography of Thomas Sauerwein. 

With the model Paul on April 13th

 

A further look through other's eyes

Following my April 8th posting 'My art through other's eyes' and publication of my most recent drawings this review has appeared.

The ambidextral perceptual cognitive and motor art of '2pencilbob': the fullness of the life-drawing 'process artist'

"He deconstructs and fuses anatomical parts in a manner that resembles a mystifying puzzle and the human body is transformed into a fresh compilation and given a new meaning. To the beholder his images create a reflection between body and mind. The gaze of the viewer is deconstructed giving them no chance to see the whole body thereby turning the act of looking into an act of assembling. His activity of dissecting the body into visual fragments transforms one's perception of the ordinary. This process of disarticulation disrupts the logic in order to find a more profound meaning. Going beyond traditional, classical and literal representations of the body to depict the surreal and abstract qualities of our subjectivity he is able to extract a deeper emotional response, and the transfer of fragments of reality into a new setting stimulates our imagination and subconscious. Through the metamorphic transformation of one object into another he finds a new potential inherent in the nude and in its ability to gradually become something else. The energy paths of a subtle unspoken communicative dialogue in a shared process between the two participants is fundamental to the holistic spatiality of this all-embracing kinetic interactive phenomena."                                                

     HB/RM/MD/SD/PP: Autobiographical Surreal Art Review Weekly: April 15th 2023

Torso

 I had an idea that the torso as a principal emphasis in my response might be a recurring theme. Here are a few I found, but I expected there to be more.

Reflecting on Reflections

Francis Picabia and Rene Magritte feature regularly in my analytical and comparative researches into my art, and within the context of the role that mirrors have played both in the work of prominent artists and in my own life-drawing sessions I thought I would draw together a few images to celebrate this particular reflective approach.

Firstly this is Magritte.

Then we have Picabia.

I may look through my own drawings and insert a few mirror pieces. Watch this space!

However, I have been prompted to address this 'reflective/reflection' idea by coming across the work of a photographer Thomas Sauerwein through my membership of Model Society Magazine. For some years now I have subscribed to this amazing insight into the world of photographing the human body. Thousands upon thousands of images of mostly female models are posted and shared in diverse settings from the intimacy of the photographer's studio thro' to architectural and landscape locations. But I have been frustrated by the complete lack of images which I feel resonate with me and how I perceive and respond to the human body.

So here a few of Thomas Sauerwein's images, and are one's which I can directly relate to my own experiences. I am sure you will see why I am so excited with my discovery of them.

I intend to contact Thomas and thank him for his amazing work. I have not yet done this.

My art through other's eyes.......

Past posts record my attempts to invent my own descriptive vocabulary of my art of life-drawing. However, I have always been fascinated in the ways that artists provide insights into their own work through their writings. Drawings and paintings capture a moment in time but a related literature is often essential to understand the context, and to explain the approach, the process and the realisation of a work. So a recent exploration of quotes by those artists who I feel an association with has provided me with a different set of descriptive insights into my own approach, my own process and that which appears as my drawings.

I have to start at the beginning. Very early on I discovered that Hans Bellmer described what I had been doing for some time: "The body is like a sentence that invites us to re-arrange it, so that its real meaning becomes clear through a series of endless anagrams."

A slightly different wording from 1936, which I prefer: "The body is comparable to a sentence that invites you to disarticulate it, for the purpose of recombining its actual contents through a series of endless anagrams." I like the concepts of 'disarticulating' (i.e. focussing on and separating from) and then 'recombining' (i.e. relating and juxtaposing as one sees it). 

So, what is the outcome of my search through numerous quotes? I grouped them under four headings: MIND, PERCEPTION, PROCESS and EVIDENCE.

MIND

"I never knew what I was doing until it was done" Man Ray

"When I am working (drawing) I am not conscious of what I am putting on the paper" Picasso

"The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer" Matisse

PERCEPTION

"Knowing how to look is a way of inventing" Dali

"Nothing is confused except the mind" Magritte

"Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see (but it is impossible)" Magritte

"To know what you are going to draw, you have to begin drawing" Picasso

"I draw what I think, not what I see" Picasso

"Why assume that to look is to see" Picasso

PROCESS

"When I make a drawing.........the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way into the dark" Giacometti

"The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker that has the last word" Duchamp

"Destruction is also creation" Duchamp

"If you know what you are going to do, what's the good in doing it?" Picasso

"Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself. This leads to sterility" Picasso

"He who thinks he can............." Picasso

"There's nothing more difficult than a line" Picasso

"Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out" Matisse

EVIDENCE

"The form is always the measure of the obsession" Giacometti

"Once the drawing has been constructed, I have a tendency to rediscover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me (often without knowing it)" Giacometti

"A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows" Magritte

A few days later I travelled over to Paul Fowler's Extreme Poses in Stroud with the amazing Callie as our model for the morning. Five 30 minute poses, but for the first 30 minutes she took up five 5 minute gestural poses. As previously I focussed in on just the bit which attracted my immediate attention: an overall outline profile, a foot, etc., etc., and these went into one A1composition. The drawings which then emerged form my reactions to her other four poses I believe have moved me along my journey. I see something different in them. Lets see what takes place next time.

It was the dangling hand that I was first attracted to. Then the wide open legs with the advancing right knee and the left leg hooked upwards supported by a strap. Other parts of the pose, the side profile of the face (I usually only do side profiles and not full on faces) and the foot introduced some activity to the top left of the drawing.

Looking from two viewpoints simultaneously:

If you look at an object then close your left eye you will experience the object from a slightly different viewpoint. If you then close your right eye you again see the object quite differently. The figure on the left of this drawing was viewed by me from looking past the left side of my easel. I then adjusted my position and the angle of my easel and the figure on the right was viewed past the right side of my easel. The obvious variation is in the relationship between the breasts, but there are others, e.g. the hand came into full view from the second position, and as I liked its distinctive slightly cupped form I entered into the composition and at a larger scale.

This is one of my compressed compositional exercises.

There four layers which have been superimposed, i.e. the two hands way up in the air, the grouping of the two breasts, the huge knees, and finally the dangling right leg. In fact there is a fifth layer which is the plinth and the introduction of the outline of the plinth suggests that the model is both sitting on a plinth and hanging from straps, which is the case.

With this last one I feel I have started to enter a new world! 

If not a new world then at least it represents a cumulative statement of aspects of my art which fascinate me and so represents a kind of platform, deeply embedded within my sub-conscious, from which I can leap into an unknown future. 

What do we have? 

• A triangulated composition sitting well within the paper.
• A compression of layers as described above in the previous drawing, in this case: the head and shoulder, the advancing hand, a breast, the buttocks, the feet taking some of the weight on to the plinth, and the plinth itself.
• A larger outline form, the buttocks, providing a space within which all sorts of activity takes place.
• An advancing , exaggerated hand drawn at a larger scale.
• The side profile of the face.
• Strong lines, to the lower half of the drawing, perhaps giving emphasis to the gravitational weight absorbed by the straps and the plinth. This contrasting with the soft edges of the upper part of the drawing as the head, the strap gripped by the hand and the outline of the right side of the torso all subtly faint into the space beyond.
• A central compositional spine giving a visual journey up through the composition.
• And utilising my themes of: 'selecting and drawing parts' (and throwing them together to see what happens, with the consequent enjoyment of risk, gamble and uncertainty), 'superimposing', 'overlapping', 'transparency', 'morphing', 'drawing at different scales'.