Art, Writing and Research
Leading on from my last post about my son’s scribbled post-it notes, I looked again at the tracings I made and was reminded me of the work I did in the summer, painting shadows under the trees at Shotover.
Inspired of course by Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, the ‘three little words’ copied from my son’s scribbles shared something with these shadow paintings and so, I traced the lines again, this time using a brush.
Iris created a treasure hunt for me and Eliot; a trail of post-it notes stuck around the flat, each containing a clue as to the location of the next. Once we’d completed the hunt and solved the puzzle (letters which formed the words ‘I am Amazing’), Eliot decided to do one of his own. He too stuck dozens of post-it notes around the flat, each with a scribbled line which he told me was writing.
It goes without saying that I thought it a very sweet thing to do and again I used the notes as a source for some play of my own, tracing the lines he’d drawn – written – on the post-its, and then drawing over them in felt-tip pen. I was immediately struck by the fact that they did indeed resemble a writing of sorts, albeit one as yet unknown and undeciphered.
Following on from my last post, the images below show tracings I made of the same drawings made with my son, this time in pencil. There was no particular reason why I made them in pencil; it was something that seemed a good idea. Aesthetically, I’ve always liked pencilled lines and, as a result, I really liked these particular tracings.
As with the coloured versions, I stacked them in a pile and it was only then that I realised what these images reminded me of.
To me, they were like preserved locks of hair – keepsakes of people and times and as such they’ve become a perfect line of work to explore.
When you’re a father, separated from your children a few days each week, the things you do with your children when you have them become especially precious. I find I take more photographs when I have them as they somehow sustain me in the days when I don’t see them. The same applies to the things they make; drawings, paintings and so on.
A few weeks ago, Eliot asked me to do some drawings with him, whereby he would draw on the page and I would follow the line he made. It was a very simple thing, but he loved it, and the images we made were lovely.
It’s drawings like these which become so important in those days when I don’t have the children, and, as I mentioned in my last post, these in particular seem to lend themselves to work I made a few years back, where I would stitch ‘images’ from sources such as GPS data (taken from walks), or old trench maps.
As a start, I began by tracing the drawings using the same felt-tips as we used in the original drawings. Given that these stitched works will, in some respects, be about memory, the fact these tracings are not entirely accurate, alludes nicely to the idea of memory itself not being an entirely accurate draughtsman.
As I drew them (the time difference between the ‘moment’ in which they were made and the length of time it took me to trace them also alludes to the idea of working to recapture a moment in the past) I piled them up and began to appreciate the aesthetic of the piles of tracings, where previous drawings would show through.
I’ve always loved drawings or paintings with scribbles and lines and these piles seemed to point to another way of using these drawings – another possible outcome. It was only when I did the same with tracings I made in pencil that another possible work began to emerge, one which was exactly in keeping with the idea of memory, family and recovering past times.
As a proud father I love my son’s paintings. If they were but monochrome blobs – which they sometimes are – I would love them, but recently he’s created some which seem to me quite unusual, especially for one so young (he’s only 3). He has a very delicate touch when it comes to painting and drawing – indeed, some of what he produces reminds me of the work of Cy Twombly.
His paintings also show the same careful touch and can be very ‘precise’ such as those below.
In the paintings above, I love the way he’s carefully separated the colours, along with the angle of the brushstrokes and looking at them, I’m reminded of the paintings I made of shadows whilst sitting in the woods at Shotover a couple of months back.
More recently I have been making work about memory. As a separated father, I see my children twice a week. It’s never enough, and in the time I don’t see them, I’m always remembering things I’ve done with them, whether it’s looking at photographs or the creative things we’ve done together.
One such line of work is based on drawings I made with my son, where he would draw on a piece of paper and I would try and follow (hid idea) the lines he made, such as that below.
Taking this drawing as a starter, I’ve started to create a piece based on work I originally made in Australia about my transported ancestor, and then about the First World War
The aim is to trace these drawings to then create a stitched version, illustrating the idea that re-creating the past through memory will always be inexact, and that what occurred in an instant can never really be known again, no matter how hard one works. There is also something about absence in these works and the bond that exists between parent and child, something which is of key significance when looking at events such as the First World War. One is, after all, not only trying to recreate the past through the imagining of the Western Front, but also the ties which bound families together.
I’ve been working on a series of drawings for a while now, the development of which can be seen in the pictures below.
More work using the iPad Pro and pencil.
Having recently bought and iPad Pro and pencil, I decided to start drawing in a style inspired to some extent by my son’s drawings and by my recent visit to Shotover wood, and, I have to say, I was pleased with the results.
The process of drawing without too much consideration of what one’s aiming to represent is similar to the process of automatic writing, where the subconscious drives the pen. I did something like this 10 years ago after a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a trip which inspired much of the work I made over the next 2 years as I completed my MA in Contemporary Arts at Oxford Brookes University. Two of the pieces that came about after various ‘automatic’ strategies are those below. First a series of drawings…
and then a series of text works…
The title of this post – ‘Somewhere Between Writing and Trees’ – is to some extent a reflection of an ‘automatic’, ‘subconscious’ process and the conscious drive to a representation of trees. Trees have played an important part in my research over the past ten years and after a gap in my work of late, they are I’m sure, a means of finding my way back in, particularly when coupled with thoughts of my son. Separated from my wife, I am also separated from both my children for much of the week, a pain which, anyone in my position would empathise with. Empathy itself has been an important part of my research – in particular regarding the victims of the Holocaust and the millions who died in World War I – and trees have played a part in bridging the gap between the past and present – a necessary step towards empathy. With regards to the Holocaust, it was the way the trees moved at Birkenau which closed a gap of almost 70 years; with World War I it was a quote from Paul Fussell: “…if the opposite of war is peace, the opposite of experiencing moments of war is proposing moments of pastoral.”
We are familiar with the image of blasted trees from the battlefields of The Somme, Ypres and Verdun, but nothing in our imaginations can take us there. We can never experience what those men had to endure, day after day, night after night. So the idea of looking for the pastoral as a means of empathising with victims of war is an important one, helping to bridge the gap by reminding us how these soldiers were ordinary men before they enlisted; men who were once boys, some of whom no doubt played in woods and climbed trees.
When I was a boy I was obsessed with woods and forests. Trees were a means of escaping the present, where in the early 1980s, the threat of nuclear conflict was ever present. They were a means of escaping to the past. I loved the idea of the mediaeval landscape, covered with vast swathes of trees, because, quite simply, it was a place where nuclear weapons did not exist. Of course it was an idealised past; an overly pastoral one, and to some extent the backdrops of portraits made of soldiers before they went to war remind me of this place. The following is a piece I made based on those backdrops.
Every one of these men was someone’s son which brings me back to my own, to his drawings and my drawings of trees.
Drawing and drawing with my son, helps close the gap which separates us for much of the week. It helps me feel close to him when he isn’t there. Drawing trees is a process which takes me back to my work, and whilst thinking of my son, becomes another means of empathising with those in the past.
This weekend, I was drawing with my children. Eliot was drawing in his usual style…
…and as I watched, I took up my felt-tip pen and began to draw. Having drawn my lines, I began to do what I used to do as a child – I began to colour in the gaps, and as I did, my daughter Iris came to help.
As we coloured in the segments, she said the drawing reminded her of an artist they’d been looking at at school, who, as she spoke, I realised was Piet Mondrian. I explained to her the process of abstraction and how when you look at paintings he made of trees, you can see how that process developed. What I forgot was just how beautiful his paintings of trees were:
And given that I’ve been working a lot on the subject of trees and how I’ve been inspired by watching my son draw, it seemed somehow fitting to look at these works and to see how they might influence my work in the future.
It’s almost a cliche to talk about children and art; from Picasso – “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – to Hockney – “The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.” But watching my son draw made me think again about that particular quality inherent in children’s drawings – freedom. Faced with a large sheet of paper and armed with a selection of felt-tip pens, my son will invariably begin by making marks. Sometimes he will tell me they are train tracks, or – as in the one below – music. But often they are just what they are – marks on a piece of paper.
I’ve been trying to get into drawing again, in particular drawing the body. And what I’ve found so far in my efforts is a wooden quality which is never evident in my son’s drawings. Of course he’s not trying to draw the human form, but somehow, I need to learn again that quality of drawing which is unencumbered by too much thinking, which is just what it is. This would prove particularly helpful in drawings I’m attempting of trees – in particular drawings based on the photographs I took recently at Shotover. At the moment they are just too rigid, and while trees are pretty rigid (and of course wooden!) they are nevertheless full of energy; they move inside and are moved by the wind. Branches bend when caught, move when released, and this potential needs to be expressed in the drawings I make.
Perhaps taking a leaf (no pun intended) out of my son’s book will help me achieve just that.
