Current body of work -

Drawing - drawing is part of the inherent structure of a visual piece of art. It is the composition, the technique, the bones. Painting is a drawing made with paint. I think everything is a drawing but they are defined differentially depending on what media is most prevalent in them. For example, painting, or ink drawing, or even an etching is a drawing made with the obvious technique so as to be categorised as an etching rather than just a drawing. A drawing is the most basic element and from there different mediums and techniques are layered but underneath everything is either a drawing itself or a process of drawing or mark making general enough to be categorized as a drawing.

Dichotomy: Near and Far - Proximal and distant - separating space and time into extremes along a shared continuum. The place is at once shared and relative. There is an issue with overlap and exclusivity - depending on the type of space or proximity you are defining, you could be proximal to someone or something but distant metaphysically. Maybe that adds to the contradictory nature of the dichotomy. There are layers of juxtaposition - one can be near in ways that are apparent to a stranger but far in ways unapparent and vice versa. From the perspective, too, of the individual themselves - they can feel far from themselves though they are near in reality… and again vice versa. There are different dimensions to what we are near or far from. Personal and general.

Form and Emptiness - Proximal and Distal - Asleep and Awake - Near and Far

This drawing is 60x64 inches. The prompt is “Dichotomy” - the instruction is; non-objective diptych.

My method, so far, is to use fine, rigid linear perspective along one half of the drawing meant to depict proximity - being within a space. The circles on the second half of the drawing are meant to represent the earth from afar, from space, from a generally unfathomable distance, orbiting. I overlayed circles, offset, to imply motion and time. Where time is another layer to the dichotomy; past, present, future. The first and latter being distance and present being here, now, close.

I then used paper towels and a yard stick to generally trace the shape of the sphere, where the dichotomy now also emerges into the methods I am using on each side of the drawing. Fine and small and precise versus yielding and general.

We’ll see.

Collaborative collage process

Experimenting with collage over a unique drawing.

For the second phase, I decided to use one of the 6 drawings as a background over which to collage pieces from a separate drawing. I combined the two drawings, preserving some of the original textures resembling tree bark and unique mark-marking on the background drawing, while also displaying some colorful elements from a separate drawing atop. The yellow pieces spiral downward along the tree-like texture creating almost a fluid motion out of the sharp shards.

The final drawing.

The last drawing was a distinct combination of red and green, complementary colors, that clashed and intermingled within the original drawing. I cut apart this drawing, sorted the pieces by color, and repositioned them, once again over one of the original six drawings, creating a distinct gradient of red to green. The result was absolute chaos. The drawing was a mess of pieces, colors, shapes, marks..etc. While specific details of the composition were compelling, to take a step back and observe the entirety of the piece was overwhelming.

Resolving Chaos.

First, I sliced the drawing into large triangles and repositioned them over brown butcher paper with distinct separation between the shapes. The result was an incredibly long arrangement, almost 7 feet long, of chaotic triangles. My final idea was to cut the long piece in half horizontally to create a more palatable final piece, rotating the two halves sideways and then placing them one atop the other.

Experimenting with collage over a unique drawing.

The final drawing.

Resolving Chaos.