Denying the accident

It has been a year and half since I sat in on a life drawing class. There is a case to be made for the idea of muscle memory, certainly with drawing. Drawing is about re-connecting your hands to your eyes without having to go through the brain. Drawing what you see rather than what you know is what makes each person’s drawing unique and I would argue interesting.

I don’t claim to be classically trained in drawing. I’ve had plenty of classes, I’ve always drawn, but the most interesting aspects of my drawings are probably what I’ve stumbled into rather than been taught. But each time I have the opportunity to draw the human form I always leave with something new. Watching the line and how it works with the surface somehow embeds itself into my consciousness. I take it away with me and at some point it shows up in the painting.

I rarely go back into my drawings after the fact. Letting them stand allows a more accurate mile marker of where I’ve been, and maybe where I was at that moment. I don’t sell my drawings, I don’t really ever put them “out there” for people to see. They are in some ways far more personal than my paintings, and in some ways they are merely tools -part of the process that eventually becomes invisible to the eye perceiving the finished art.

There’s something about the limited time of a pose that makes a drawing specific. I get the information I feel is most important and I leave out the rest. I guess I feel that spending too much time on a drawing after a session is over somehow undermines the moment. This is only because I don’t consider this my primary medium and also because I don’t paint figurative paintings or portraits. Were either or both of these conditions the case, I certainly would have a different stance.

I was reading the writings of Kirk Varnedoe again this morning. He spoke of a faith in abstract art. Faith, not in a religious sense, nor in a directed stance toward the Absolute; but faith in possibility, in -as Pollock also said, denying the accident.

Heaviness and elements. Fire, water, terra, sky. Minerals and metals. The underworld and the walking world combine for a brief instant to illuminate the dream. A piece of wood laying around in the studio. Thoughts of motif. New palette colors. The moment, -the response to seeing and then a new idea rushes forth. What if? This is the way that things occur in the studio. Premeditation must always yield to spontaneous realization. Paint on surface, nothing more.

Where? I’m not sure it matters so much. Action engages intention and releases its own energy. Action pushes the universe.