One hand or two?

What can be achieved with one hand is amazing. 

But some of us need two. And, even then we don't start to reach the pinnacles.

Henri Matisse

Bob Fowles

A thought on how perception changes......... OR What are my drawings telling me?

 If as McGilchrist proposes the right hemisphere of the brain is designed and suited to be the master and the left hemisphere its emissary, we can look for evidence to support that postulate. McGilchrist notes that the act of seeing which may seem straightforward to the left hemisphere, is doing much more when processed by the right hemisphere. The left brain may be seeing solely with the eye whereas the right brain is using the act of seeing to go beyond the surface of an object to the substance and meaning it incorporates.

Iain McGilchrist on  Page 359-60 of The Master and His Emissary makes these statements about the act of seeing which takes place in the right hemisphere

"Every object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ or perception in us." (Goethe)

...for us to truly experience something to enter into and alter us, and there must be something in us which specifically responds to it as unique.

Understanding, then, is not a discursive explanatory process, but a moment of connection, in which we see through our experience - an apercu  or insight. ... each act of seeing, in the sense of allowing something to 'presence' for us, is in itself necessarily an act of understanding."

To William Blake the act of perception is not static or solitary. Time and Space are altered as are the organs which perceive them. If we are capable of living in Eternity, if we have developed our spiritual senses sufficiently, we are not opaque to one another but share the one life which includes all.

Simultanism

I've just come across 'Simultanism' in an article in the London Review of Books, and was instantly drawn to some parallels with my recent work. 

'At the Royal Academy' in London Review of Books, October 10th 2024, page 36, by Natasha Fedorson. 

Natasha reviews a collection of modernistic art from Ukraine on exhibition until October 13 2024 (apologies, since you, and I, have now missed it). Amongst the 65 pieces are works by Sonia and Robert  Delaunay in which they developed a technique they called Simultanism, in which contrasting colours  are placed alongside each other, or allowed to overlap, creating an impression of motion and gesture. There are compositions of abstract forms, with chunks of colours which fade into one another. Two illustrations in the article resemble very much some of my work.

The concept of the simultaneous is something I have frequently over the years referred to and developed in my life-drawing. To start with there is my way of drawing with a pen or pencil in each hand which working together, simultaneously, make marks on the paper. Then there is the cubist aspect in which two view points of the same object are brought together and presented to the beholder at the same time, i.e. simultaneously. Also within my cubist process I have brought together a series of focus views of different parts of a pose but have emerged them, overlapped or superimposed them, morphed them together, utilising a degree of spatial transparency, whilst all this is happening on the paper (for the viewer) simultaneously.

So I anticipate that you, the reader, will now appreciate the relevance and significance of my application of this newly discovered term 'Simultanism' to some of my own art. But please note that this is just one attempt to discover or create a term which meaningfully suggests and describes the genre which my art is entering.

Illustrations from the article At the Royal Academy in London Review of Books, October 10th 2024

Self portraits

Just come across thedrawingsource.com/self-portrait-drawings.html a fascinating collection of 100 self-portrait drawings from 1484-Today. So I looked up one or two of my recent own.

Numbers 50, 51 & 52

 50

 51

 52

The original line drawings are from female models at Extreme Poses in Stroud, so we see evidence of the straps which in the case of 50 and 51 support the models sometimes clear of any plinth or floor support.