grid drawings, or 'meditations'

The 'grid drawings' began as an exercise to temper my eye and hand and calm tumultous emotions at the time of my widowed mother's hospitalisation in May 2016. It was a particularly beautiful month that year, generous warmth during the day, fragrance from luxuriant Spring growth by night. I remember the apple blossom glowing snowy white at dusk, the scent hanging on the air like a perfumed curtain, when I walked alone in my mother's garden after visiting her in hospital.

Guardian of the house for the period of my mother's sojourn in hospital, and, having previously purchased on impulse a trio of squared paper notebooks, which I had with me, I began to draw. Following a directive unfathomable in origin, I coloured in the tiny squared enclosures using a selection of coloured pencils from a pencil tin of my late father's which I had found in the house during my stay. I came to settle upon a square of thirteen little squares by thirteen ( there were thirteen differently coloured pencils in the tin). This seemed to satisfy my eye for the moment. I became aware that the drawings needed something to unify them, and thus applied a layer of graphite, like a skin or veil, through which the colours glowed softly. The graphite membrane seemed to function as a visual metaphor; a device to suggest distance; the shadowy reaches between experience and recollection, or between the inner world of the mind, and external reality. I drew each day as though possessed, even taking the notebooks to the hospital so that I could draw in the hospital canteen between visiting hours.

I did not know then, that four years later I would still be compelled to make these tiny, intense yet subtle drawings and that the drawings would have evolved so much in terms of their poetic and emotional resonance. I draw every day, as though my life depends on it, aware that, as before, owing to difficult circumstances, I need to assuage panic and focus my attention beyond the narrow confines of my mind.

Titles for the pieces came, and come, unbidden to mind. Often they are generated by the memory of a place, or happening, a person, or state of mind. I frequently dedicate pieces to people, thus a piece comprising four drawings entitled 'over the hills and faraway', is for my partner, and refers to the period in our life together when we lived in rural isolation in Hampshire. 'My sister's harlequin slippers' is dedicated to one of my sisters and refers to  her chequered velvet slippers, which, as a child, she loved so much that she even wore them in the garden.

When I frame the pieces I follow the counsel of someone I trust, who suggested that I reference the notebook. Thus, I frame them in such a way as to show the edge of the page where they have been torn out of the book. Notebooks of drawings are like visual diaries; to show only removed pages is to imply that there is other, hidden material, perhaps too intimate to reveal. Certainly such a drawing, once removed evokes the invisible notebook, and is suggestive of the activity of keeping a diary; the reflective, quiet setting down of thoughts, responses, dreams. Notebooks are portable and private, both attributes which I value. The drawings made within them are my journal entries.

studio morning May 5 2020

A return to 'colouring in', and the 'grid drawings', or meditations, about which I shall write in more detail in a following post. Suffice to say that colouring in a small square of thirteen even smaller squares by thirteen in a carefully chosen palette gives me pleasure and soothes my mind. I am thus able to follow Mary Potter's dictate; "draw all the time...".

the transit of Mercury

One of several series of drawings depicting the transits of Mercury and Venus across the face of the sun. This particular series was made in April 2018;almost exactly two years ago. The tiny black disc of Mercury can just be seen making it's way across the greater disc of the sun, from left to right, following a curved trajectory. I am not sure when this celestial event took place, as my source did not indicate, but I do know that such a transit is rare enough, and to me, a tremendous event.

I was able to colour in to my heart's content, enjoying the laying down of first spectrum orange, then yellow, then 'apricot' , before adding a rim of  red to deliniate the sun's outer edge, or 'limb'. The placing of the sooty black , tiny disc depicting the transitting planet caused me much deliberation and I took great pains in my application of the waxy tip of the pencil to paper.

solar

Three images from a series depicting the gradual and total eclipse of the sun, not in sequence. These drawings were made in 2018, I think somewhere around the beginning of the year, but I didn't date them. It is not my habit to date or even sign works; I have a rough idea in my mind as to when I make drawings, sometimes a date will fix itself in my mind because of associated events or weather. There are thirty drawings in the series. As before, they are made on black Lokta paer with colour pencils. The colours are muted by the black, but nevertheless, shine out softly; to my eye there is something mediaeval and naive about these drawings, a quality which I have come to identify with my work.

I have come to accept my deficiencies as a draughtswoman; I am not capable of photorealist drawing, for example, indeed cannot copy with any degree of accuracy as I have not eye for the relationship of shapes and lines , but I can colour in. I am driven by a need to express ideas through visual art, therefore must needs to find a way of so doing whilst understanding and accepting my compromised facilities and utilising my strengths. After all, untutored artists and so called 'outsider' artists are capable of powerful, articulate works despite, maybe, being less than perfect draughtsmen and women.

I need to expunge the words "I cannot draw" from my mind; they are far from helpful. Instead, seed the words " I can colour in", and seek out shapes to colour in that enable me to articulate my ideas.To that end, I shall purchase three sets of stencils that I came across recently; a set of female figures, a set of male figures, and a set of figures of the child. I am excited about this future purchase and can imagine joyfully colouring in carefully arranged figures. I am reminded that I used stencils a good deal in previous works; stencils that I had made, cutting them out of stiff paper, thereby allowing myself the pleasure of making something as well as the undoubted pleasure of then colouring in. Perhaps there is scope for assembling a drawing from different motifs; the sun and figures, for example.