Doodling

Let me talk again about intuition. Back in January I showed a drawing made while being shaken on that amazing Clinitron hospital bed, a post surgery cocoon that supports a patient on warm air floated glass beads so wounds can heal without pressure. Part of its pressure relief regime is vibration and random movement which while wonderful for healing makes drawing difficult - so as you work, the mark itself becomes important, perhaps outweighing any subject.


Here are a couple of  small sketches in which I tried to temporarily take advantage of the bed's movement where the marks add up to loose, barely controlled doodles.  These small 2x3" pencil images, started with no direction, just simple lines and shapes which gravitated toward surreal landscapes that grew and changed as I worked. To me they look like close-ups of a weed patch, like background sketches for a movie like Pixar's "A Bugs Life".  (A recent Pixar documentary told of the animation team's research where they "drove" a very tiny camera on wheels through the grass and weeds outside of the studio to get a realistic bugs eye view! What a fun assignment!)  

You might think this a mere diversion, nothing but a dead-end, but I suspect there's more. Here you can escape the demands of straight representative drawing. Just letting go of craft can free the mind to see  strengths unsuspected. You let your intuition take control to discover new directions as here, the layering of marks, dark on light building a complex background.  In a major work this might be a strong unifying component of the design and a factor contributing rich visual interest.  While I have no idea where these drawings might lead, I'm going to pursue the idea (without the help of the Clinitron, thank you!) to see what potential lies in it. I'll let you know!  As in the past I remind all of the importance of "the mark"as evidence of the artist's presence, his hand at work in whatever his medium. This often is his signature.

"Surrealism is embedded in the everyday, in the daily experience."   Katherine Conley

"Open the window of fantasy to know what reality can bring."   Raul Arellano