Different responses to Shelley

Here are my drawings from the first life-drawing session following my period of reflection, the notes of which I posted earlier (see: 'I Think therefore I Look')

It was most fortunate that Paul Fowler had arranged for Shelley to be the first model of this current set of Thursday mornings. I say fortunate because as I have discussed on more than one occasion I believe, in fact I know, that the dialogue between myself and Shelley, i.e. between 'artist' and 'muse' is special. So, having carried out a deep self-analysis about my art, and its place in my life, I felt a huge sense of unconstrained freedom and was ready to burst forth with a new set of steps to create the next length of pathway in my life-drawing journey. With Shelley there could be no barriers to cross. 

So here we have the usual five drawings of five 30 minute poses. I have my palette of: A1 cartridge paper portrait format, two fine-liner pens, various grades of graphite pencils in pairs, a set of Derwent tinted charcoal blocks, me sitting at my easel (so I am low, plinth eye level and often looking up at the suspended model). I am unable to recall the sequence I produced the drawings, the order of which may or not be significant, but it is clear that I must have been interested in exploring different permutations of my mark-making media, or maybe it was that each pose provoked in me a different response.

A Post-reflection response: Any change?

This morning was the second life-drawing session after my reflective moment which I recorded in my previous posting (The first session with Shelley our model I have yet to photograph and post). Too early to analyse the outcome. My first impressions, and I did discuss this with Paul Fowler, after drawing number three, is of a renewed and possibly different sense of 'spatiality'.

This first drawing is not particularly relevant to my current analysis as it is the product of five 5 minute poses and not a response to a whole single pose. It is therefore a kind of 'collage'. It may say something, but I will wait and see.

'I think therefore I look'

I'm sort of responding to Rene Descartes who in his Discourse on Method 1637 announced "I think therefore I am"    But I didn't always analyse, be self-critical, attempt to categorise, place into context, that which was appearing on my canvas. The early years of my life-drawing journey were all about finding out. I then entered a period of standing back and seeing what was taking place in my life of life-drawing, which allowed the formulation of a personal framework and intellectual structure from which I now pursue and evolve my idiosyncratic relationship with, and response to, the human body. 

This blog records my consistent attitude of reflection, and has highlighted moments when I feel breakthroughs have taken place, when new responses have occurred , when the unexpected has challenged. 

Last Saturday evening I was driving the 100 miles back from the West Midlands following a win by my football team. So I was feeling good. On the car radio I tuned in to Radio 3 Jazz. Rebecca Nash, composer, pianist, singer, featured and spoke about her art. At its core was the establishment of an intellectual framework that provided a structural platform from which she and her musicians could respond in their own spontaneous and idiosyncratic way. 

This struck a chord with me. 

I immediately related to this concept. Had I not been through and experienced this exact process? Not suddenly, or even over the past three or four years, but as a phase within the overall changes of my fourteen or so years of my life-drawing journey. On arriving home I entered some thoughts on this in my note book. Over the next few days I engaged a reflective mood. I scrolled back through my hundreds of drawings on my blog. 

What emerged? 

A THREE PHASE construct. An attempt to describe changes in the qualities and character of my art, but more particularly changes in me, my approaches, the ways I have responded to those very special moments of engagement with a muse and how the artist/muse dialogue has become deeper and so special.

So, here goes my initial and draft THREE PHASE history:

PHASE ONE

experimentation

discovery

what is life-drawing?

how to represent the nude?

what materials?

whose art appeals to me?

PHASE TWO

defining my art

a language and descriptive vocabulary

classification

alternatives defined and categorised

genres, movements, artists to relate to

an intellectualisation

an established framework

rules and ways become embedded in my sub-conscious

skilled tools

PHASE THREE

(I am now well into it)

spontaneous response

unplanned outcomes

framework: i.e. materials, process/variables, are rarely thought about or varied

no thought whatsoever of end product 

no thought of the process ahead....... I JUST START

Phase Two has enabled me to THINK about my art. Having this ability has enabled me to SEE what I am looking at. Hence: 'I THINK THEREFORE I LOOK' becomes an amazing platform for penetrating deeper into understanding my perceptual processes, but probably what is more exciting is my increasing understanding of, and engagement in, the artist-muse dialogue, and how the depth of this dialogue impacts my drawing.

Postscript: 

I recently read about Tracey Emin, that her art is constructed, therefore SHE IS HER ARTWORK. 

I believe that as I am now truly into my Phase Three I can claim that 'I AM MY ARTWORK'

My current essence: A further thought

I want to add the following analytical constructs to my comments in my previous posting: ONE: Artists have always reserved the right to collage their observations TWO: The shapes spring away from one another with a tensile inner force THREE: Elements co-exist in sapce.

My current essence

My previous posting was of all my drawings from a three day workshop over at Niel Bally's studio in Talgarth, with our model Annie Driver. Since posting these I have reflected on the outcomes, and here is my current thinking: 'my final three drawings help me to identify a descriptive terminology for my moment in time' You will know that I am consistently searching for a vocabulary which conveys the essence of my art. So here goes with the latest........ Drawing number one: CONVERGENCE bringing the two sides, the two body profiles, together. Drawing number two: MORPHING fusing together parts of the body, (frequently) at different scales. Drawing number three: SPATIAL TRANSPARENCY superimposing, layering, complexity, seeing beyond and at different scales.

Annie at Talgarth

My next steps......... (27/01/2023)

Not at all sure what these next steps (in my life-drawing journey) will be.

Not been doing any life-drawing since before Christmas.

Not been in a dialogue with a muse.

BUT ........ 'If a day goes by where I haven't done something related to drawing, it's as if I've overlooked something essential. It's like I forgot to wake up' 

This is an amended quote from Richard Avedon who is a fashion photographer, and I have replaced 'drawing' to where he refers to photography.

So, What next?

Having spent a part of each day doing something related to drawing, what is it that I have done and achieved? 

• I have scrolled back to my drawings from the last 14 or so years (from my blog, my tablet, my computer records and my note-books),
• I have studied and questioned the definitions, descriptions and classifications which I have given to my art at different times,
• I have attempted to identify strategies which I have employed to create a particular set of outcomes,
• I have noted drawings which say 'This is my art',
• I have clarified the set of artists with whose philosophy, approach and works, I have found a connection and have helped me to understand what it is that is appearing in my drawings: 
• Hans Bellmer, 
• Egon Schiele, 
• David Hockney, 
• Francis Picabia
• Albrecht Durer, 
• Gustav Klimt, 
• Jenny Saville, 
• Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, 
• Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 
• Maurits Cornelis Escher, 
• Nicolai Fechin, 
• Pablo Picasso, 
• Phillip Dvorak, 
• Dolorosa Reveries, 
• Hans Breder 
• 
  
• (I may have overlooked others, Apologies). 
• 
  
• I emphasise that I have rarely consciously 'copied'. The above artists are those who I have come across in my research for parallels to the images, forms, representations of the human body, and my mark-making, which is evidenced in my  drawings.

As an outcome of this period of introspection, self-analysis and reviewing my drawings, I sense an 'emerging expectation'. 

Not at all sure as to what will be the outcome ('Paths are made by Walking'). 

But I have engaged with concepts which appear relevant from Cantor, Planck, Einstein and Heisenburg, and have been explored by Magritte and Escher.

So, here are some keywords to add on to my recent vocabulary: 

• IRRATIONALTY, 
• INFINITY, 
• INSOLVABILITY, 
• CHAOS, 

which I have placed alongside my recent drawings and have found them to be most pertinent.

To conclude this posting I will insert what I believe could be a significant image to illustrate where I am at this moment in time. Not sure of its author (So, who ever it is, 'Thank you').

When viewing it, you should apply the above 4 keywords. But to me the essential approach is that of CUBISM, i.e. the simultaneous observation of a body from different viewpoints.