Things Falling Apart - Three Frottage Drawings in Charcoal

During the lockdown, I joined a small group of fellow printmakers from Shadwell Print Studio on a test online course, which was all about printmaking at home with basic materials. In rediscovering frottage and printmaking without a press, I honed a relief printmaker's sharp eye for collecting printable textured surfaces, which is how the packing tape that I used for the mark making in these charcoal rubbings found a home in my studio.   

 

The postcard image below was another starting point  – I’ve had it for years, since I lived in Thailand in the 90s.

Bridge over the Mekong at Kompong Cham THIERRY DIWO

 

The rickety bridge particularly resonated with me, although a language of my own, of makeshift and collapse, emerged in my drawings: provisional, improvised, falling apart buildings, bridges, anonymous and abandoned shelters without human figures.

I thought too of Chinua Achebe quoting Yeats in the epigraph to Things Fall Apart:

 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

My drawing and illustration practice is based on paying attention, in really taking the time to see and honour a certain kind of will to life, radiance and energy in the natural world. In these drawings, the will is towards dissolution, falling apart and decay, although it is part of 'nature' too, just not as we romantically define it.  Arguably, our homes, factories, highways and shanty towns are no less part of the natural world. Although I would mostly prefer to think otherwise, they are made of earth, iron, tin, oil and plastic, which came from the same place as every other thing we revere, after all. They too arise, and pass away. There is no thing on this planet that isn't subject to that natural law. Anthropogenic or otherwise.

 

In this upside-down time, the pandemic has exposed fault lines in the way we regard and sustain what we revere as 'nature', for sure. The cracks are harder and harder to ignore. 

 

Also, I have been thinking about the place of the trickster figure as a metaphor for the coronavirus, about how we need to get used to shape shifting, to the makeshift adaptations to how we live and relate to our world, which will clearly never be the same. Which anyway never was the same, from one moment to the next or from one point of view to the next. (As a person who draws and pays attention, and also as a meditator, I know that to be true for me). 

 

The climate and ecological crisis similarly continues to unfold and unleash havoc whether we choose to look in the eye or not, and it too brings rapid, unceasing change. Upsiding down our normals. We are already adapting and things are already makeshift in many parts of the world. 

 

I have no illusions that we can fix things outright at all, but I am committed to looking the change in the eye, and appreciating the inherent will to life and energy contained in it either way.  It feels a relief to be able to make work reflecting that and to incorporate the falling apartness of things into my practice more consciously.

 

Notes on my weekly life drawing class.

It is so tempting to throw out the lot. And equally tempting to keep every one of the drawings in the unwieldy, growing pile of work that accumulates from my weekly life drawing class. Unedited, unloved. Under the bed, often, or in a folder propped up somewhere out of the way. A pile to be avoided for months on end (or years, used to be).

Ghosts of art school drawing crits linger therein. And charcoal dust. Smudged drawings. No good drawings. Can't remember if good or not drawings. So over it drawings. They hang about, those drawings, piling up week after week after my Friday drawing class.

I took courage, a few weeks ago, and had a good clear out, which was also a good look through, because it is actually quite lovely, to appreciate the work I have done. And to discern which drawings work and why, which drawings are not for keeping and which drawings point to a new way forward.

When I started life drawing again a few years ago, I didn't keep any drawings. I thought of each session as akin to a musician's scale practice and happily binned the results. Freeing, to know the sketches were just a record of a moment of seeing. Nothing to lose, and no pressure to improve, no need to evaluate even, at the time. A good way to dodge the ghosts of art schools past, perhaps.

The class could be what I needed it to be - just a process of turning up week after week with no expectations and getting on with some simple observational life drawing.

Now that I'm a regular (at the Friday morning sessions with London Drawing) I've found my groove again so that I now keep, and document, my work even while managing my expectations on the Must Make A Good Drawing front.

I'm learning to accept my drawings, even the not so successful ones. I value the effort of drawing for its own sake: I've turned up, I'm doing my best and that's good enough. It's been a way learn to be fine with making mistakes, a way to try new things and a way to learn to be patient with the days when I'm not really that focused and the drawings seem worthless at first glance.

When I take my recent drawings out and spread them all out in the lounge like this, I feel satisfied at my progress. And, in a good way, I see I have many more dodgy drawings to get onto the page, so much more to learn and so many reasons to keep giving it another go.

Holiday drawing

I usually don't draw much on holiday, but I have a happy memory of drawing these early one evening while D was making dinner in the tiny kitchen of our shepherd's hut in the middle of a field in West Wales.  

We had space for a mini break in early June and the plan was to explore the Pembrokeshire coast. Although the weather report wasn't saying camping, I wanted nature and super simple.   

We found a shepherd's hut (which is really a small tin shack on wagon wheels) just outside Tenby, Wales on airbnb. Perfect for camping lite but without rain soaked walks to the loo block and nights of flapping nylon.

I loved that it was a short walk across a potato field to the cliff path and then a choice of windswept hikes along the coastal reserve. Simple.

The hut was super cute inside, and I didn't feel the urge to clear away a single thing. Usually the first thing I do when I get to a hotel or B+B room is take down offending pictures, stuff frilly/satin cushions into a cupboard and get rid of all knicknaks. (Ye olde shepherdess figurines and jolly wooden lighthouse ornaments, I'm talking to YOU.)

We had cows for neighbours, and a little local train choo chooed by every hour or so, and birdsong - welcome respite from the sirens and constant traffic hum of home.

There was even time and inclination to draw. I love that I drew these campion flowers loosely, without that drawing school thing of 'draw what you see not what you think you see' sounding in my head.  This has its place, but for me it has become a Rule of Drawing, which is totally tiresome. 

I draw what I like these days, and how I like, more and more.