Thoughts on January's Work

The drawings are an ongoing exploration of an idea that links into the circle of life and the theme of the four seasons that I began to explore last year.

Sketch book drawing

Detail of above drawing

Detail of sketch book drawing below.

Sketch book drawing

As I am doing them, other themes have come to mind; that of hand crafting; the creating of cloth from a single thread of yarn by knitting or weaving, the way a piece of knitting looks when being pinned out to reinforce its shape. The marks also have a strong reference to the hedgrows I have been drawing and the shadows created by sunlight through hedges and trees.  All these ideas relate to the tangled marks in the drawing and the edges of the drawings themselves. 

A constant theme in my work is the duality between control and instinct.  Some of the marks are reminiscent of script, and knots.  The tally marks are a simple device that references the passing of time, the counting of days, hours, minutes, seconds, years, stitches.  All the marks are individual rather than produced mechanically, they are the result of my body and brain working together or the tension between the two as one tries to assert itself over the other.  Always there is this dichotomy between the abstract and the primitive, logic and instinct.

Detail of first painting, before completion

The repetition of the mark making creates the whole, just as a ball of wool becomes a piece of textile, the drawings and paintings emerge from the process of mark making and thoughts of the past, loss and optimism for the future.

First two paintings, early stages

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