LINE-FINDING @ CCA Andratx, Mallorca. UNDERSTANDING PROCESS.

A series of drawings, lines and marks made during1-month artist residency at CCA Andratx.

“A DRAWING IS THE DESIGN OF YOUR OWN BELIEFS”

So long as the mind is in motion there are always new, unfamiliar glades of expression that can be drawn out through the invention of new processes. Each style of line yields expressions from a different territory of the mind. Cultivate a LINE – that is to say, spend time practicing and understanding it - and this practice becomes more familiar, more comfortable and can therefore be executed more confidently. One is able to exercise this practice to the point where there is little or no FRICTION between thinking and drawing. The practice becomes ASSIMILATED. What appears on the PAPER before you occurs at the same rate as the (un)conscious thoughts that produce the image. And so, drawing and thinking become assimilated. The image you are both creating and looking at informs what you think, while at the same time, what you are thinking informs what it is that you are drawing.

“WE ARE CAPABLE OF INFINITE LINES. FLICKERING BETWEEN LINES IN REBELLION AGAINST A UNIFIED STYLE IS TANTAMOUNT TO CONFUSION TO THOSE PEERING IN. HOWEVER, THE OPENING UP OF THESE NEW GATEWAYS IN OUR PRACTICES IS ESSENTIAL FOR THE CREATION OF NEW IMAGES.”

The determination to create NEW images is nothing new. This determination is however accelerated by the rate at which we are now experiencing images. Simply put, we are as individuals moving towards assimilation with the www. One session scrolling through my Instagram, Twitteror Facebook feed on any given day conjures images from the four corners of the globe; #miamibeach, #sydneyoperahouse, #yellowstone, #broadway, #akihabara,#burningman2016. My personal organic memories are becoming assignificant as those I experience online. Of course reality trumps online.However, something I see ONLINE can be as important in my imagination as something that I experience in REALITY. They can be. They sometimes manifest themselves in my dreams. Through images I have experienced online of#iceland, for example, I am enabled with the ability to dream about it, without my person ever being there. Like experiencing literature or a film. I’ve never been to #iceland (not yet at least), but I’ve experienced countless different perspectives of the enchanted island - albeit through flat-screen devices. And so I am licensed to share the dreams of others. Voyeuristically skimming through the ‘memories’ (posts) of those whose accounts I follow, I too develop memories of #iceland.

We are now able to cut, paste and filter reality as we wish – Snapchat every second of every day if we so please. Our smartphones enable us to take any part of reality we so wish and keep it in our pockets. Or at least that's how it feels. This perception of what we are doing when we’re hunting and gathering online is down there somewhere in our subconscious. It’s satisfying. All the more so when we add on the idea that we don’t necessarily have to experience things first hand for our imaginations to take hold of them and manipulate them into dream matter. Pokémon Go is something of an analogy for a process that is happening on a much grander scale. Into our pocket go memories, friends, textures, trees, songs, colours.Everything. Carefully chosen slices of reality that we believe, whether consciously or unconsciously, become a part of the fabric of our mind. We can collect all the reality we like. It’s illusory but satisfying.

“PUT THE PHONE DOWN”

THE NOTION THAT I AM EXCAVATING REALITY THIS WAY THROUGH MY FINGER TIPS HAS ALSO FED INTO THE WAY THAT I PERCEIVE DRAWING. Of course this is just a perspective. I’m not necessarily proclaiming this to be truth. It’s a PERCEPTION. Reflecting on the state of my imagination, and the internal processes that churn when creating images and drawing I identified that my imagination was now informed by both organic and online experiences. A cheesy explanation would go something like this: "it is in this space that our art now exists. In between REALITY andONLINE." This was an energizing premise for seeking out new space.

“BUILDING A REALITY IN A WORLD WE’VE ALREADY SEEN AND TRUSTING NEW PROCESSES IN GETTING THERE.”

Though I had only a month to begin working through these premises, I was able to identify what was positive about perceiving the world in this way. I was able to locate what was vexing my practice; accepting that my imagination is stimulated both by organic reality and that which seeps through flat-screens. The studio floor became ALIVE with materials also from the four corners of the globe; bits and pieces from India, USA, Denmark,Sweden, China and countless other places. Things I have collected along the way. The material lying there had been filtered in the same way that I select what to follow and unfollow. Moving through this material required more energy than scrolling in a downward motion using my thumb. Constantly reordering whatI ‘liked’, ‘loved’ and ‘disliked’. In some way the studio filled with an abundance of materials somehow appeased my mind. There was also an irony in the fact that much of this was MADE IN CHINA, the epicentre of manufactured products. I was happier surrounded by all of this material than I would be in an empty studio. In my peripheral vision there were elements from all over the world freed from the vertical framework of newsfeeds. It felt familiar, all ofthis choice. There was a point when I felt that EQUILIBRIUM had been achieved.It was from this position that work commenced, experimenting and toying with expressions of an imagination redefined through my experiences online. 

For every new ‘original’ image created, I argue that a new process is too invented in its creation. For all of the countless arguments for and against what consists in the idea of ORIGINALITYExperimenting with MULTIMEDIA image-making presuppose ‘originality’ because their aesthetic value, or that which is interesting about these kind of images, lies in colluding mixed materials together. Contexts converge and you’re no longer confronted with a flat image.

FILL REALITY WITH CHOSEN DREAMS, INSTEAD OF MOVING FURTHER AWAY.

Inventing processes and finding lines starts in the environment in which the making is occurring.Eco-system, peripheral vision.

MATERIALS.  The materials that we use as apparatus of expression are definitive of the end results. To use a pencil is to determine the self to ‘make a pencil drawing’. The medium defines the outcome. Using oil pastels will produce lines both familiar to the self and its audience; the familiarity deriving from both your own past experience as well as the public’s knowledge of the medium and its usage.

The pursuit for THE ORIGINAL IMAGE therefore lies somewhere between the use of traditional media and surfaces, textures and ‘canvases’ that have rarely, if ever, met. Invariably, there are an infinite number of such combinations. Pastel on frying pan. Acrylic paint on hair extensions. Spray paint on beach towels. To this end, the pursuit of the original image, a valuable one at that, makes it necessary to isolate TRUE NARRATIVE from just material testing.

‍