It's an idiom for a reason, but I'm not going to say it.

A point that I've found myself returning to many times so this can be short and sweet I hope. My drawings are of entireties, an entire field, flock, or texture. There isn't anything beyond the page, so I don't want to imply that there is, this is a given. Michael Frank referred to me illustrating the 'whole' as a power play, which I found amusing and true. All this is mirrored in how I want them to be viewed as a singular composition first, then perhaps the individual elements inspected. The individual elements, by the way, also have to fit within the part/whole issue. They themselves are made of sub-particles, and are sub-particles themselves within the drawing - it's all very recursive. Anything else I say is probably a retread of my previous posts, a good sign: life (or art) imitating art (or life)?

Off in the distance

I don't want to be defensive, though this post is and probably should not be. My drawings certainly are repetitive, and I understand how they one might interpret them as 'obsessive,' but I don't look at them as either. I do not find them repetitive in execution: each iteration on the page is distinct from the ones prior, an act of active forgetting, each an attempt to match the ideal which I have constructed in my head. The process of placing the first drawing on the paper is no different than placing the last.

These are all also the basis for why my drawings are not obsessive - I let go of what I have done previously with ease, I don't let past errors influence my current task. Making more drawings does not add more meaning (meaning is necessitated by a full page taken as a unit). Obsession is rooted in the past, these drawings require the present. My current plan of display will hopefully allow them to be viewed primarily on a holistic scale. Viewing will not jump from one object in a drawing to another to another to another in the repetitive spirit and will shift instead to the drawings as a whole, a creation which is very much not repetitive (see post about patterns).

Tile versus stucco

I'm not interested in patterns (from a design perspective), I'm interested in pattern identification (from an observational perspective) and I think there's a huge difference. Patterns are conscious repetitions with a definable formula for their creation. The only true pattern in my drawings are the individual marks which I then repeat to make a composition. Patterns found on the larger scale - spatial, textural and structural specifically - are prescribed by the viewer; the placement of patterns (objects) into the scope of the whole drawing is automatic, dictated by what is near and where I think I 'need' to work next. The larger compositions appear to have elements of pattern but disseminate into randomness quickly; there does not exist a formula to define them but it can be found. The objective natural world doesn't consider things in succession, only one element and then another element and it's up to us, the subjective observer, to condense this into a comprehensive, defined pattern.

That felt good.