Killer Whale

Jacques Derrida wrote in Memoirs of the Blind ,

'It is as if seeing were forbidden in order to draw, as if one drew only on the condition of not seeing, as if drawing were a declaration of love destined for or suited to the invisibility of the other...'

I am almost certainly quoting Derrida wildly out of context but in my thinking about abstract drawing this resonates in a space where otherwise words cannot find a place. The great space of personal memory.

This afternoon the beaching of a Killer Whale on the beach at Shingle Street, its large carcass inert and powerless on the outgoing tide. The sucking shingle,voices in unison.

Such memories the stuff of drawings.

Photo Robert Taylor
Constructed Drawing.

Mind the Gap!

 

I read an intriguing book review this morning written by Ali smith. She was writing about a new translation of Camus’s L’Etranger. Maybe it is obvious but it hadn’t really occurred to me that a translation could so dramatically alter the meaning of a text and change the whole tenor of such an important literary work. In her review Smith talks about the way this particular translator listens beneath the literal meaning and ‘permits, an original edgy strangeness in the prose itself… ’ Ali Smith  Writing on a tightrope The Times Saturday September 22 2012.

 

A response to the image on my blog last week set me thinking again about the gap between seeing and perceiving ; the gap between intention and interpretation. These are thoughts that worry and disturb as well as excite as after all isn’t it that very mystery of the gap that makes the whole process of making art so compelling?



Ohh...and looking too!

Constructed Drawing
Photo by Robert Taylor

 

 

Autumn dis ease

Drawing this week, the lone spherical shape in a softly worked pencil space, a square set within a larger rectangle…a hovering.  The shape is barely there but evidently there, a literal effacement of line through the rubbing of cloth on paper .Yet the end result an abstract drawing which has physical presence and strength.

This gives me some hope in the face of loss, a loss of purpose and direction….an autumn dis ease.

 

Yoke detail.

Spiders webs

 

 

A beautiful friend who had been present at the opening of The Bloomberg Commission: Spazio di Luce by Giuseppe Penone http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-bloomberg-commission-giuseppe-penone-spazio-di-luce inspired me to look up his work.

Then this morning the garden festooned...'A Web Spectular'!!!

Autumn Webs

Autumn Webs

Natures own tactility... but hers just a gossamer touch...and for me pencil on paper again this week...

Inside and out...

Women talking together interweaving their listening with a layering of thought.Searching for words, watching body language,picking up clues.

Multi tasking as usual.
Two conversations this week and an email exchange have touched upon the desire to find a voice for that illusive, intangible thing that lies below the surface.The search to find a way to express something that will resonate beyond just the written word or stroke of a pencil on paper or stitch sewn into cloth. The longing for connection...inside to out.

feather the nest

 

I read that even the great Rothko agonised over this one, seeking partnership for his work through the eyes of the viewer.