Thursday 15 May 2014

Drawing as sight and expression: experimental art

Those of you who follow my facebook will have seen this photograph, it shows my line drawing of Ribe Cathedral and its inspiration, drawn in-situ at the Field of Heads.



To say I don't draw that often is a massive understatement, I never draw. To be honest, I think its because I think I'm not very good at it. And I don't like doing things I'm bad at. But sitting there, for a few hours recording the buildings of historic Ribe in the Easter sun was magical; and I learned two key things about drawing that you probably already knew.

Background
I drew a bit as a child, but never really had the patience to finish things, less so to shade things in; the negative feedback in the school reports followed all the way until Year 9 when art became more about ideas than drawing and I started to succeed; but by then I'd found languages, human geography, politics and the work of T S Eliot.

Drawing escaped out of the art lesson confines and bled into some of my favourite lessons, history and geography. I always thought that the drawing activities were a bit of a waste of time, to help people whose primary mode of communication wasn't words, unlike me.

I was wrong. And I'm sorry.

Drawing as sight
As regular readers of this blog will know I love old buildings, particularly cathedrals with towers I can climb. I like to think I'm good at reading architecture to guess at age and influence, but drawing Ribe cathedral made me really look. I could see the different stages of construction with more clarity; two identical windows started to take on their own identities. Drawing Ribe cathedral as part of the surrounding landscape helped me to think about the city as a whole and how it had been shaped by this very physical influence. I can see with hindsight that drawing a cathedral could really help a young historian or geographer in their endeavours. Colour me humbled.

Drawing as expression
I understand that art doesn't always have to mean something, but I love it when it does (Wallinger's 'Where There's Muck' is my favourite of the Tate Britain collection). Whilst sketching the cathedral I became aware that as the artist I had great power over how you would perceive Ribe cathedral, especially if you have never seen it. I could accentuate certain facets, I could completely erase others! This editing process could be conscious or a mere result of my inaccuracy as an artist; but in the process of replication I was editing. That is some power!

The concluding post on Denmark is coming soon! And there's plenty of other things to tell you about, but those can wait for another time.

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