Contingent Gestures, Boom Gallery

2018

Artist Statement: These drawings explore the relationship between moments of chance and controlled gesture in drawing practices. My works aim to capture the unfolding process of drawing, how marks are amassed on a piece of paper over time through a combination of random and intentional actions. As a medium, drawing is able to capture the action of the artist, revealing intuitive movements and processes of decision-making in creating a composition. As said by artist Avis Newman, ‘To retrieve the gesture in a drawing is to translate the mark back into the action of the hand.’

My work aims to capture these natural drawing instincts and disrupt them. This idea has been explored through setting up drawing processes that subvert my normal level of control and facilitate moments of chance. These processes are influenced by the Surrealist notion of Automatic drawing, a process designed to subvert the artist’s conscious control and evoke the unconscious mind. I have explored this through drawing the first layer of a work using my left hand, with my eyes closed, or while concentrating on other tasks. These gestures evoke new, unexpected shapes and compositions that I can then expand on with more controlled gestures. 

The details of these drawings are also influenced by my experimentations with distorting observational drawings of landscapes and natural scenery using a flat-bed scanner. This process involves moving an image on the scanning bed as it is being scanned to create distorted images which l then use as references to create new abstract details. I am interested in how this process is rigidly controlled while at the same time creates truly random and unexpected forms and gestures.