Is my practice method Intuitive? Responsive? Spontaneous? Resolving? or self satisfying? Does the Intuitive-nature not have an inbuilt potential of controlling the Concept...? Especially, if the concept is not predetermined? But in trying to dominate the intuitive, does the concept not exterminate originality? Or can these coexist? I don't know! May be there is a balance? Or maybe not! Is it confusing? Or is it making sense? I am not sure. I know Something. I used to know. Do I know NOW..? What if I KNOW…? What if I CAN know…? But can I…? May be yes…? May be not…? Even if I can, will it mean anything…? Anymore… I live in a Contemporary
World, where Meanings are losing meanings, meanings have multiple meanings, meanings have no meanings. My meanings, Your meanings...His meanings..Her meanings. Realities are multiple, Multiple Realities!!! Realities are subjective, everyone has his own reality, but Meanings can be constructed. Can I then construct meanings?…. Can I c o n s t r u c t R e a l i t i e s ? I h a v e q u e s t i o n s... M a n y Q u e s ti o n s… Some Questions…. No Questions!!! For many years, my work seems to undergo a constant friction... It has gone through a struggle between body and soul… form and sensation…the tangible and the intangible.… Can I initiate a dialogue? An interaction? Interaction through the images... Images that I draw…? Images!!! We have thousands of images…stored in our conscious and subconscious mind.... I translate visuals from memory…fragmented memory…. Through the medium of drawings, I have an idea that I need to mediate. I find it interesting to reinterpret unseen visual fragments on to material surfaces. …I have ideas!!!….lots of ideas. I prefer this idea... go on to that idea. These always keep coming. Tangible visual ideas…and images! They flow… get out of c o n t r o l. Just like D r e a m s, we have No control…. They do not necessarily relate to each other…. or Do they…?
“Mayhew (2007) examines the potential of life drawing to encounter “the other” in the model and concludes that life drawing is a way of investigating other human beings. Mayhew, (2007) and Wallis (2003) both ask what would be gained or lost in a drawing which views the subject as “another person” with their own emotions, rather than a voyeuristic object, or expression of the artists personal emotion. These ideas were also discussed on the Drawing Research Network (2007), where Margaret Mayhew cites the work of Karen Wallis (2003) to illustrate the “transformational and interpretative processes” between artist and subject. Wallis questions “what it is that is obscured or left out in the process of viewing the nude as another person” and she sees drawing as a way of “tracing that act of spectatorship and recognition.” (Wallis, 2003)
Traveller's Tale:
Once upon a time, a conscious decision to divorce from the observational drawings led me into the unconscious lines from my imagination. After a while, critical thinking on those ideas changed my perspective again. But recently, through research in practice, it was Realised what Reflective Art Practice can truly mean by 'Visualizing Research' (Gray), Reflective Cycles, talking to peers and reading contemporary literature/journals. Especially the established methodology of reflective practice and conscious dialogue with the artist helped to speed up the process.
Nature of Drawing:
I have been making drawings since I was very young. Since an early stage of my life, drawing had become my second nature. I draw like I talk, think, eat or sleep. The only times I do not draw are when I am not able to draw. I mean when external circumstances do not allow me and make me stop practicing it. I call that starving moments in time. In general, my drawings and I have been living happily together at least for the last three decades. Since the mid 80's, I have also been looking for images and shapes, just like many others. In clouds, in shadows, in ordinary surfaces. At this point in time, everything that I am doing, I consider a drawing, and I am interested in drawing even outside the page. I think that it has a very unique language to it. And something three dimensional can be a drawing, and even though I do not particularly work in video or installation, I feel that in any medium there can be a relationship to drawing.
Getting it Over:
Traditional life drawing is an old currency that the western contemporary art world has refused to acknowledge in main stream art education for a number of years. Most of the modern higher art institutions have ignored teaching traditional skills and methods completely. The observational drawing is one of the victims. Instead, it is debated why are we still teaching traditional art in some areas. I believe it is about time to realise that we need to bring a balance in all extreme views. A traditionalist 'observational' mind will have to take some further 'thoughtful' steps to get accommodated in the contemporary art world. On the other hand, the contemporary art world should start acknowledging that going completely out of the box was an extreme idea.
(Random diary notes, December 2014)
"Get Your Self-Portrait done by myself"
People who know me, also know that I jump around various disciplines of Art and Design. Sometimes, like many other artists, I also indulge in different types of commercial artistic work to keep myself going. There is a big concern about artistic compromise, especially when money dictates the work or when someone else is making a decision on the artist's behalf. The creativity margin becomes endangered. The above owl is an example that I have recently submitted for a local art project. Since I was into my autography mode, I thought to make it a part of my research in practice and included it as an extra work with my other drawings I was producing. To make it a test case on its own, I decided not to compromise on my original idea at any cost and sketched it the way I would want it to be. When completed, it gave me a good artistic feeling. I wanted to re-experience the notion of self satisfaction. This organisation has their Facebook page where they were uploading new submissions. Somehow it didn't show up there. This drawing has also reminded me of similar and repetitive instances from my past in applied arts that have followed an exact pattern. In the commercial aspects of a creation, I and many co-artists have gone through such experiences, and it gives practical learning to differentiate between 'Art for art's sake' and 'Art to fulfil other motives'. When I used to work in an advertising agency, we learnt that the most creative ads were the ones that got rejected by the clients.
Oh, I See!!!
What can you see? A broken piece of glass sitting on another glass sheet? There can be different interpretations in regard to the existing visual shapes within this piece of glass. For me, there is a beautiful profile portrait of a young woman in it. She seems slightly worried. But why? I feel like finding her story. The face can be see in the middle and is very obvious to me. Let me ask, who created this drawing? Can I use this found image and make it into my own, through what I see in her story?
Feelings for Life:
I had been doing life drawing for the past 25 years. But for the last 15 years, it has changed its meanings for me. The above is an example of my early Autograph portrait. A quick sketch. It is not drawn in a life drawing class or by making anyone model for me, nor is it from a picture. It was just a thought of her, and I recalled the model through my hand gestures. I let my hand draw it for me. It was the day when I heard the news of her becoming very fragile in her late age, and I could not stop my hand. The reflective thinking about the drawing process has now enabled me to link it to the 'immediate' and 'intuitive' nature of my drawingpractice.
