mute: Drawing

Today is 9/11, 2010 and I went to a drawing exhibit of Gerhard Richter. For much of the work, except the three big works on the far wall, I thought this is a preposterous idea, intellectualizing drawing … its very nature is about freedom it should defy theorizing. It’s form should be a personalized extension of the mind, the vision of the hand that makes them. Unless drawing is meant to be a final product its existence needs to simply be an extension of the direct utilitarian needs of the artist. It is the intuitive extension of the mark making of the child and we understand from kindergarten we only learn from what a child draws we do not correct them.

This is not to take away the power of drawing. Its very freedom can be the essence of an artists production, can be the form most fused with the raw energy of the artists hand. Talouse Latrec or Degas’drawings, Egon Schiele’s painterly elongated drawing and particularly Michelangelo’s last crucifixions in charcoal all testify to the power of the medium. Finally drawing, I have become increasingly aware, is like the script for theatre. No matter how good the acting, set, direction, without a proper realized script the play is compromised. Drawing is script writing for art.

My own drawing has moved away from finished work to the development of the idea. The capturing of the idea and sorting out the possibilities what it suggests.

So I offer a few examples of my drawing as my own personal exhibition