Ramble & worries about drawing - rabbits down a rabbit hole

Martin Kochany 4 years ago

What are my ethics of Observational Drawing?

 

I don’t have a definitive answer, but a sense of mental resistance when looking to transpose drawings to print.

 

This hesitancy is twofold:

  • weariness of reducing experience to stock types & stereotypes.
  • Cautiousness about exaggerating to a point of a symbolism that rapidly tires.

 

At the moment I am  fortunate in that my sketchbook drawings are still defined by awkward search for accuracy. Character & resemblance are inconsequential - and a unsorted distraction.

 

Whilst I choose subject by rapid sensing of what’s interesting (that initial hock that stops indecisiveness) I aim for semblances over exaggeration or skill.

 

Skill also troubles me. I have a strong resistance to drawing as performance. What I mean by this is the conspicuous display of craft which places the imagined gaze of the viewer over the liminal conscious act of looking. In these conspicuous displays the drawing becomes a object defined by the positive self-regard of the makers “look at me”.

 

I post everything on Instagram soiled hankies without regard to quality or reception. (Is there a cruelty in  garnering indifference?) and leave sketchbooks as barren stumble field  There is a state whereby the banality and frequency of posting drawings causes a indifference equal to note actually participating in the charade that they, and by turn I have any value or meaning.

 

The liminal necessitates. A state of absorption temporarily stabilise the gravitational force that I don’t exist. When I draw I don’t exist - what surrounds me has substance but at least I can temporarily be anchor to.

 

Down the rabbit hole