DRAWING; SOME CONSEQUENCES

Prelude

Throughout my life I have often found myself making connections between seemingly unrelated experiences; for example, events that I am experiencing in the present often come together with experiences from my past, and I find that it is through their coming together that meaning is revealed about experience. Often the understanding I gain in those moments deepens my understanding of those experiences I have had and continue to have concerning being an Australian, and I have found that the distance gained through living away from Australia helps me to see the connections more clearly.

In 1997 I came to with the goal of understanding more deeply and absorbing firsthand the ideas that had fuelled the burst of creativity and output here in the 50’s and 60’s by artists who have become known collectively as the New York School. I have been fortunate to meet and study with artists who were in the main intimately connected to or a part of the New York School. Initially I absorbed what was being taught, however after some time I came to a point where I felt that what I had learnt was inhibiting my quest to feel ‘at one’ with the drawing. I did not know what feeling ‘at one’ with my drawing meant, however I did know that I wanted to feel it and I knew that I didn’t. I also sensed that what I was searching for was evading me because of the process by which I was drawing. I therefore began to question the process I was using to make work, examining it to clarify what it is that I am seeing and looking for when I engage a space through the act of drawing.

In order to question the activities I perform when drawing I have attempted to observe and document what I experience while drawing and to consider how those activities serve me, setting out new methodologies if necessary. Initially I worked in a traditional ‘life drawing’ situation from various models over a number of years, always drawing from exactly the same position in the studio so that I could become familiar with the space in order to observe subtle nuances as they arose over time.

In attempting to articulate observations of the experiences I have while I draw I shall endeavor to put those observations into context. Points of reference will be established by looking at relevant artists’ writings, statements and, most importantly, works.

At the beginning of the 21st century, when technology and the internet have made all imagery easily accessible , to use drawing as a means to engage with the world in order to find images that come out of the experience of that engagement might be considered onerous and labor intensive. However I have always thought the act of drawing to be an intermediary between me and the world, through which I am able to experience the world more deeply. In fact I have found drawing and to be the only activities through which I am able to have certain experiences in life, the acts of drawing and painting revealing those experiences. Perhaps this is why human beings have always drawn.

As the New York artist Keith Haring once said; “…Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.”1

1 Haring, K. "Keith Haring Quotes." Retrieved 17th December, 2009, from http://www.artquotes.net/masters/haring-keith-quotes.htm.

Some observations concerning erasure

A large part of my previous drawing process was erasure. Erasure had become a way to get certain strengths into my work, mostly by finding and delineating shapes and planes. After some time of working this way I became aware of a growing sense that the process was dominating the drawing, and I was no longer sure about what I was gaining from it, so I decided to look closely at the act of erasure to get a sense of why artists erased and how erasure had served them and their work.

Rauschenberg

Image 28. Erased De Kooning Drawing 1953

Erasure has and is an important part of many artists’ drawing process. For instance, erasure was controversially put to use by Robert Rauschenberg in 1957 when he erased a drawing by . Rauschenberg states that his motives for erasing the De Kooning came out of his “love for drawing” and his quest “to figure out a way to bring drawing into the all Whites”.2 He writes that;

I kept making drawings myself and erasing them and they just looked like an erased Rauschenberg, it was nothing. So I figured out that it had to begin as art. So I thought it’s got to be a De Kooning then if it’s going to be an important piece. 3

At the time the art critic Leo Steinberg was perplexed by what Rauschenberg’s motives for committing an act that, as Steinberg acknowledges, is often viewed as a “neo Dada gesture”. When, in an effort to unearth Rauschenberg’s deeper intentions Steinberg confronted him, Steinberg’s suspicions of oedipal motivations were only partly acquitted. Steinberg concluded that;

He was expelling from the art of painting what for 500 years had been its soul; and he wanted De Kooning’s consent - implicitly a benediction - to speed him on. He was staging a ritual of supersession that required two parties. As if he could clear the field honorably only with the master’s acquiescence and so lay the grounds for new

2 Rose, B. (1987). Rauschenberg New York, Vintage Books.

Rauschenberg referred to the white that he was making in the late 50’s as the “all whites”

3 Ibid.

“You see how ridiculously you have to think in order to make this work. And so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and went up and knocked on his door, and praying the whole time that he wouldn’t be home, and then that would be the work. But he was home, and after a few awkward moments I told him what I had in mind, and he said that he understood me, but that he wasn’t for it. And I was hoping then that he would refuse and that would be the work. And he couldn’t have made me more uncomfortable. He took the painting that he was working on off the easel, I don’t even know if he was doing this consciously, and he went over and put it against the already closed door. But I was noticing things like that. And he said, Okay, I want it to be something I’ll miss. …and I want to give you something really difficult to erase, and I thought, thank God.” Robert Rauschenberg

art.…Rauschenberg’s logic makes sense only on the level of metaphor, as a symbolic gesture to mark a personal rite of passage. And perhaps more than that.4

Rauschenberg stated that he erased the De Kooning drawing in an effort to bring drawing into his all white paintings, erasure being a powerful mode of drawing. However Steinberg concluded in effect the opposite, surmising his intention to remove drawing from all art (a sort of grand all- encompassing gesture of erasure or removal if you like). Erasure has been used historically as a means of removing unwanted marks (with the aim of perfecting the work, in pursuit of larger artistic goals), and in this context Rauschenberg’s act seems less in the service of larger artistic goals (he stated he wanted to bring drawing into his all whites) and more concerned with satisfying his own Oedipal needs.

Matisse, Auerbach and Giacometti

The 20th Century saw many artists use erasure to bring into their work something that could be attained in no other way. Three artists that I have looked at closely in relation to this are Matisse, Auerbach and Giacometti. All have used erasure to pursue their ambitious artistic goals. Elderfield observes of Matisse’s work between 1913 and 1917 that;

Matisse pursues his perennial aim of uncovering the “essential qualities” of things beneath their ephemeral, external appearances….he radically decomposes the very structure of things in order to uncover their essence, and the symbols that result are more ruthless in their simplification than ever before.5

4 Steinberg, L. (2000). Encounters with Rauschenberg. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press. P. 21 5 Elderfield, J. (1993). . New York, The Museum of Modern Art. p.237

This quest was advanced by Matisse in his drawings of the late 1930s, again with the help of erasure. Roy Oxlade, an English artist and art writer, sees in Matisse’s Reclining Nude seen from the back an uncovering of the essential qualities which lie beneath the appearances of things, reminiscent of the essential qualities evident in Paleolithic art;

Matisse himself, in the Verdet interview, links his drawing to that of certain cave drawings. Nowhere is the connection clearer than in his 1938 charcoal drawing Reclining Nude Seen from the Back. Overdrawn, again and again, the figure shifting across the paper, the drawing links across the years to the cave mammoths at Rouffingnac.6

Image 29. Matisse Reclining Nude seen from the back 1938

Matisse would rework and erase in charcoal in order to arrive at an image that was essential, primordial, and universal. Though he sought imagery without the decorative quality of Matisse, the English artist Frank Auerbach relied heavily on erasure as part of his search for imagery. In

6 Reichert, M. (2008). Art Without Art. London, Ziggurate Books. P.31 post WW2 England he sought a human presence within the surface of the paper, coming out of a process of repeated destruction to that surface. Auerbach’s obsessive erasure imbued his sitters with a softness and gentleness of light, countering the harshness and ruthlessness of his mark, invoking a tenderness and quiet sense of presence.

In his Portrait of Sandra 1973-4, the different stages of the drawing, forty in all, were photographed. As the work evolves it is possible to see how the silvery grey, resulting from repeated and vigorous erasing, gradually allows a subtle human presence to pervade the work. In his in-depth survey of the artist’s working methods Robert Hughes posed a rhetorical question concerning his drawing surfaces, where the sheets of paper suffered holes as a result of all of Auerbach’s erasing;

Image 30. Auerbach Portrait of Sandra, 40 versions. 1973-4

So why not throw the sheet away and start with a new white one? Because (or so Auerbach apparently feels) the ghosts of erased images ‘in’ the sheet contribute some pressure to the final version, which he is loath to lose. 7

7Hughes, R. (1990). Frank Auerbach. London, Thames and Hudson Ltd. P.198 The ghost that Auerbach relied on served to help him see the emerging subtleties that would pervade his final work. The marks Auerbach makes in the final session of drawing bring back a freshness, directness and ultimately, life to the drawings that had been battered by all of the erasing. Those marks in fact reveal what Rawson sees as being lost by the European painter by continued reworking; He writes that the

European painter, by going over the surface of his picture again and again, has obscured the movement pattern of any underlying drawing there might be, and has lost or destroyed important ‘spiritual’ qualities which he was actually able to capture in his drawings.8

These observations by Rawson relate well to Giacometti, whose acts of erasing, no less obsessive but less physical than Auerbach’s, seem to reveal qualities about experience that are different to those revealed by Auerbach and Matisse. As a result of repeatedly cancelling out much of his drawing Giacometti introduces air to his drawings, with the forms and space within his drawings solidifying around an in-between state. John Berger considers the spiritual qualities of Giacometti’s activity, realizing it;

…is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of his staring at it. The act of looking was like a form of prayer for him - it became a way of approaching but never being able to grasp an absolute. It was the act of looking which kept him aware of being constantly suspended between being and the truth.9

8 Rawson, P. (1987). Drawing. , University of Pennsylvania Press. P.16 9 Berger, J. (1980). About Looking. New York, Pantheon Books. P.174 Image 31. Giacometti David Sylvester 1960

Giacometti’s quest had great subtlety which heavily involved erasure. As Andrew Forge writes;

…the fact that things get smaller as they go away; that noses stick out; that a person could look at you and then turn away, or cross the street, and still be the same person, were endless half-threatening mysteries. Drawing could control them up to a point, but not cure them. Pencil and eraser, coming and going, could make the transparent rays of vision opaque, the abyss palpable.10

Neither found nor lost, the forms are in the process of arriving and dissolving, the resulting image tenses as that moment is captured. David Sylvester describes some of the characteristics of what that resulting tension might be;

The most striking thing about the paintings, and to a lesser extent the drawings, is the density of the space. The atmosphere is not transparent: it is as visible as the solid forms

10 Forge, A. (2000). Observation: Notation. New York, The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

it surrounds, almost as tangible. Furthermore, it is uncertain where solid form ends and space begins. Between mass and space there is a kind if interpenetration.11

Matisse’s found primordial image, Auerbach’s emerging human frailty and the palpable abyss or interpenetration of Giacometti are all dependent on the activity of erasure being part of the process of drawing. Importantly they rely to varying extents on the evidence of those erased marks, the pentimenti, being present on and within the surface of the paper throughout that process. The presence of the marks register as either freshly applied notations or as barely perceptible pentimenti, becoming part of the underlying patterns that are integral to the larger aims of the artists’ work. Rawson identifies these underlying patterns, which can be sensed in a completed work, as the kinetic basis of drawing;

… there always lies at the bottom of every drawing an implied pattern of those movements through which it was created. A comparison with music may be helpful. Music takes on physical presence in performance. Its structure is properly conveyed only in time. Nevertheless the structure has an existence outside of time in the sense that one can, within limits, repeat it and comprehend it as a unit. We know that Mozart…saw compositions complete in his mind before committing them to paper. The case with a drawing is precisely the reverse…its structure in fact is produced by actions carried out in time.12

The structures and patterns are a determinant of the actualization of their aims; what is achieved largely because of erasing. Functioning in a similar way to the structural elements of a human being (our understanding of the nuances of personality are inseparable from the deep structures

11 Sylvester, D. (1997). About Modern Art. London, Pimlico. P.54 12 Rawson, P. (1987). Drawing. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press. P.15 of the body, e.g. the skeleton and its musculature) these structures and patterns are fundamental to the way we recognize and understand form.

Some Observations concerning erasing and form

“A fundamental principle of non-erasure means that whatever marks were made, those are the marks we see.” 13

These artists had been successful in using erasure to access and reveal subtle qualities about the subjects they were drawing. The act of erasing is central to the process of the unveiling of non- preconceived essence; of the image involuntarily arriving. However the act of erasure seemed to be inhibiting that for me, dominating my process such that something essential that I felt lay at the core of my interaction with the space through drawing was not able to emerge, so I stopped erasing. I gave away using the eraser in life drawing sessions as well as in all other drawing. Initially the marks accumulated and the form of the model appeared, only to dissolve again underneath the weight of the mass of more marks. The drawing became very dark. As the marks accumulated I stayed longer with them and got to know better the subtle relationships that the marks were creating on the paper. The marks were packed tightly in the space, and at times I felt like I was climbing through thick bush as I drew into the heavily notated surface of the paper.

13Zegher, C. D., Ed. (2003). The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act, Tate Publishing and Drawing Center New York. P.149

Image 32. Drawing made without eraser

In allowing the marks to build up on the surface without erasing I became aware that I had to find a way of sustaining the developing and emerging feeling of the pictorial space without being overwhelmed by the surface of the drawing. As the marks accumulated and I was observing the space of the drawing come to life a number of questions became urgent. If I have to edit, how do I do so without erasing and, how will the many marks that accumulate on the surface all manage to be seen? Or rewording the same question, how can I believe in and be present in the moment I’ve placed myself in, instead of doubting it? Equally importantly, what attributes do I need to reveal in the drawing so that I can feel ‘at one’ with it?

Image 33. Tape drawing-My Sister Anne Image 34. Tape Drawing-Reclining Nude As I drew and the surface got darker and denser, I could see that there was a need to edit because the feeling of the pictorial space was not yet an equivalence to the feeling I was having in the real space. I first tried a method of editing that involved making a mark with white tape, pushing the tape into the space, over marks previously made with charcoal, the edges of the tape defining geometrical angles and directions on planes. As I did this I felt that I was making positive marks; I acted because I wanted something, as opposed to not wanting something (e.g. not wanting could mean removing a form that was in the wrong place or erasing an area that didn’t work).

After drawing in this way for some time I stopped using white tape and returned to using only charcoal to draw. I noticed then that editing was happening internally, instead of editing by taking marks away. I was editing through selection, the form of the mark coming from my interaction with the surfaces I was drawing. I noticed that the direction my eye took as it wandered around the space and the marks I chose to make were coming from my feeling in each moment, each moment and consequently each drawing being vastly different. As I paid attention to the marks arriving in this way I noticed that the speed at which I made marks slowed down, and as I drew my attention was resting on the qualities I was experiencing (of the outer, exterior world and those of my inner experience) in a much more balanced way.

Some observations on White

I began to draw with a lighter touch and I noticed that a feeling of luminosity was coming from the white of the paper. I noticed that if I went too far and lost this luminosity I felt that the drawing no longer worked. The white of the paper has played important roles in compositions by artists from the East and West for varying purposes. In the West artists like Rembrandt, Cezanne, and Matisse have all used the white of the paper as an active participant in their works.

Rembrandt used the white of the paper as a means to depict light. In Interior with Saskia in bed, Rembrandt describes a definite light source, and leaves the forms receiving intense light relatively untouched, as Salvesen notes; The drawing is not only been made in brown ink with the pen and the brush but also with grey, which is not so usual. Rembrandt probably added the grey last in order to strengthen the areas which indicate light, where the paper is left white.14

Image 35. Rembrandt Interior with Saskia in bed Before July 1640 or September1641

Where Rembrandt activated the white of the paper by use of a subtle tone, Matisse approached the white with thick marks of black ink. On his modulation of the white paper, Matisse reflected that he;

modulates with variations in the weight of line, and above all with the areas it delimits on the white paper. I modify the different parts of the white paper without touching them, but by neighborings.15

14 Salvesen, S., Ed. (1991). Rembrandt: the master and his workshop: drawings and etchings. New Haven and London, Press, in association with National Gallery Publications. P. 78 15 Bois, Y.-A. (1993). Painting as Model. Cambridge, Massachusetts, the MIT Press. P. 23 Image 36. Matisse Seated Woman 1906

Bois observed that Matisse elevated white to function as a formal element equivalent to the color shapes in his compositions, working almost as musical elements moving the eye rhythmically around the composition. “Matisse’s drawing lights up… Matisse “prunes”, or rather uses a minimum of inscription in order to let the “touching whiteness of the paper” resonate more and more.”16 In relation to his use of white and ink, Matisse himself commented that “…various parts of the body are themselves studied so that the whites left between the paper’s edge…and the black lines form an expressive ornamentation.” 17

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid. P. 55 Image 37. Mercedes Matter Still Life 1962-65

Mercedes Matter, one of my teachers, used white in a way that was influenced by Matisse and Cezanne, as Finkelstein observes; ‘Many areas of the paintings are left bare, and, like the non- finito of late Cezanne, become heavy blocks of color in their own right, after the model of his watercolors.18 The white Matter leaves in her paintings serve a formal function like a block of color would do for Hans Hoffman19 (with whom Matter studied20), holding a relative position and making colored light with the colors around it.

18 Finkelstein, L. (1991). The Paintings and Drawings of Mercedes Matter. Modern painters. New York. P. 40 19 Hofmann, H. (1967). Search for the Real . Cambridge, Massachusetts, The M.I.T. Press.

20 The New York Studio School of Drawing, P. a. S., Ed. (1996). Mercedes Matter- Drawings. New York, The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

Image 38. Cezanne Foliage 1895-1900

Where Rembrandt’s white may have worked as light and as form, and Matisse’s as a formal element equivalent to a color, Chinese artists have for thousands of years achieved much with little through their use of white. Weimin He attempts to précis the special qualities of Chinese art21;

The very charm in Chinese literature lies where it is without words; in music, where it is soundless conveys more than sound; in painting it is that if one’s mind can reach there, there is no need for the touch of any brush and ‘formless is the image grand’ (Lao Zi, Chapter 41) 22

He describes some of the qualities that Chinese artists have been able to give to their white; “One prominent characteristic of Chinese painting is its treatment of empty space as solid space. Lao Zi stated ‘Knowing the white, retaining the black, it is the form of the world’ 23

21 in a brochure written to accompany an exhibition of contemporary Chinese artists at the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford in 2005 22 He, W. (2005). The Mystery of Empty Space, The Ashmolean.

23 Ibid.

Image 39. Hsu Dao-Ning Fisherman on a Mountain Stream 970 - 1052

Those areas of white left by Rembrandt and Matisse signify something materially solid (planes of forms) whereas in Chinese painting the aim is to make something else visible, real, the white ultimately serving a purpose reflected in Daoist Philosophy, as Weimin He writes;

The principles of the Chinese painting tradition derive from Daoism, which emphasizes the unity of humanity and nature together with the release of an individual’s creativity. The stressing of empty space or void is also a Daoist feature.…Empty space is regarded as the beginning of the myriad things, so it can be regarded as a foundation of Daoist philosophy…the real mystery of the emptiness is that empty space refers to qi (chi), a cosmological term which is formless, but bestows life to Chinese painting. Without qi, empty space cannot be differentiated from blank space….White in Chinese painting suggests emptiness whilst black signifies solidity.24

While drawing I noticed that the white of the paper could act as a sort of light box, with the light seeming to emanate from within the drawing, feeling predominantly like an all pervading, inner glow. With my first mark I am aware of this light and its precariousness; this light can easily be turned off with the wrong mark, however with attention it sometimes gradually increased in intensity. When I am about to draw, the white sheet of paper seems to be pure and perfect prior to being marked; still, and as yet to be experienced. It is a state that, to be known by me, must be

24 Ibid. experienced anew by me with each arriving moment in an act not unlike Giacometti’s prayer. I sense that this state of purity, being similar to a state of stillness of mind, is knowable only if that stillness is coming out of one’s own life.

Some observations concerning unity and loss

In practice unity hasn’t been so easy to come by. Although I feel I can grapple better with it when drawing a model in a controlled situation, unity is something that holds little emotional significance for me when realized that way. The figure always seems to be relatable to the space of the drawing room (which was set up and arranged for that purpose) however I cannot escape the feeling that it is removed from the movements and gestures of the day to day, the reality of everyday life, and therefore no matter what I am able to achieve with a model in formal terms, I find myself left wanting to address bigger issues within my life.

I experience the moments that have most significance for me while walking in the landscape or around the area I live where a chance happening may occur. These chance happenings are fleeting moments, moments when all the elements seem to come together to add up to something that I feel is meaningful (e.g. a person forgetting themselves, there being something about the space which facilitates that being seen by me, and I feel in that moment that it has a larger more universal meaning). This moment resists being grasped and therefore challenges, calling out to be so grasped.

Sometimes I have noticed the moment while driving in the countryside, I back track, placing myself in the exact position where I became aware of that meaningfulness, but it is gone. I cannot see it a second time in order to draw it, as the moment has passed; I am, however, left with its memory. Derrida talks of the problems of capturing an image that has been thus glimpsed;

Ruin is that which happens to the image from the moment of the first gaze… As soon as the draftsman considers himself, fascinated, fixed on the image, yet disappearing before his own eyes into the abyss, the movement by which he tries desperately to recapture himself is already, in its very present, an act of memory….It is the very operation of drawing, and precisely its setting to work. The failure to recapture the presence of the gaze outside of the abyss into which it is sinking is not an accident or weakness; it illustrates or rather figures the very chance of the work, the specter of the visible that the work lets be seen without ever presenting. 25

I’ve noticed that there are many ways of falling short of recapturing that elusive presence (though I register the failure in the quality of my experience as well as the emotional qualities of the drawing). Failing to find a sense of unity within the drawing by not balancing or reconciling all the competing forces at play (including the luminosity and narrative demands), or arriving at a unity without having fully interacted with the forms and the space, without a sense of having completely known or possessed them, both leave me feeling incomplete. It is like spending time with friends and leaving with the feeling that we never found a way to discuss some deep events occurring in our lives.

Baudelaire offered an observation on how this moment might be approached while considering the work of Constantine Guys, who was “a passionate lover of crowds and incognitos.”26 In contemplating Guy’s process, Baudelaire observes two factors necessary for Guys to grasp this fleeting moment;

the first, an intense memory that evokes and calls back to life - a memory that says to everything ‘Arise, Lazarus’; the second, a fire, an intoxication of the pencil or the brush,

25 Derrida, J. (1993). Memoirs of the Blind: the self-portrait and other ruins. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press. P. 68 26 Baudelaire, C. (1964). The Painter of Modern Life and other essays. New York, Da Capo Press. P. 5 amounting almost to a frenzy. It’s the fear of not going fast enough, of letting the phantom escape before the synthesis has been extracted and pinned down.27

From the moment of seeing something, feeling the urge to capture a moment that feels meaningful and real, memory is at play. It is at play (and we rely on it completely) regardless of how brief the time is between seeing and moving to make a mark. Derrida observed that it is a quickly vanishing moment that memory serves to capture and Baudelaire identified the need for fire in remembering that moment. I felt this fire for the first time as a kid when I played rugby union. I remember the game beginning and the pace and physicality of it sparking a huge amount of energy in my chest and my belly. Suddenly I had the focus of attention, energy and strength to perform my role in the game. The onset of fire performs a similar function when I draw.

In his lecture On the Relationship of Form and Meaning in Western Art, Finkelstein showed that Baudelaire recognized that unity has to come from the gut.28 Whilst drawing, until this fire sparks, everything feels foreign, alien to me. After the fire sparks I feel like I belong to the world, I have a role to play and, bit by bit, each moment begins to feel familiar and I know what it is that I have to do.

27 Ibid. P. 17 28 Finkelstein, L. (1995). The relationship of Form and meaning in western Art New York Studio School Lecture Series. New York, The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. See Appendix One , P.102 Shakespeare, I believe, has this in mind; the moments when we become one with nature and with the world, when he gave King Lear the following words;

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness..... You owe me no subscription. Then let fall your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and despised old man.29

Form is what emerges from an artist engaging with experience and drawing, an engagement which ignites a fire out of which the two become one with the maker. Mercedes Matter referred to this moment of coming together (of artist, world and drawing) as “the trilogy”.30 31

This moment of oneness, the “trilogy”, approaches as the relationship between me and the world that I’ve engaged in through the act of drawing moves from one of quietly getting to know and recording (recording my interaction is essential to getting to know, as it was for Matisse, Giacometti and Auerbach), to a feeling of being inside something that is coming to life, growing, forming. A tension announces the onset of this moment and culminates when my relationship with the world, which I experience through drawing, becomes one with the drawing. At that moment of tension “something new” has arrived.32 That tension, or moment of arrival, I have come to know is the moment where previously unrelated experiences start to find their place, start to relate to each other within the space of the rectangle. In that moment I am aware that

29 Taylor, S. W. a. G., Ed. (1988). William Shakespeare the complete works. Oxford, Clarendon Press. King Lear 3.2-15 P. 959 30 Matter, M. (2000). Critique.

31 Oneness, the way things come together. Maryanne Coutts made the following comment during one of her reviews of this paper. “When I was reading this on the tram this morning a woman with a baby in a pram nearly got stuck in the door and I had to stop reading to help her… baby was wearing pink.”

32Finkelstein, L. (1995). The relationship of Form and meaning in western Art New York Studio School Lecture Series. New York, The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. See Appendix One, P. 104 meaning is arriving, that I am beginning to feel and know the connection between parts that I had never imagined could exist together in time or place, a connection that I feel was always there yet not able to be seen. This connection is what I am interested in. The connection between those parts that emerge as I draw and paint directs and forms the imagery. The imagery is a feeling that I become aware of in the moment “that there is something”.

Epilogue

In New York, in the middle of the night when it rains, the view from my window out over the street is endlessly interesting. The sounds are dulled, less piercing, easier, soothing. The colors and lights are alive forming shapes, constantly in motion from innumerable sources; some from passing cars going in either direction, others from traffic lights or flashing shop signs. The colors and shapes randomly and unexpectantly appear and are quickly assimilated into the ever evolving composition, each losing its own to the whole. The composition has no boundaries or rules, assimilating newcomers instantly, each moment growing out of the last.

The silhouette of legs arriving into this procession instantly demands of these elements a different role; the rain falling, water running, cars passing, reflecting lights and shapes of color all now seem to support those legs, providing compositional structure and context, somehow giving meaning to their arrival, departure and onward journey. Perhaps I search to bring together irreconcilable opposites, and perhaps that quest is impossible, but to be able to make it real, physically through the use of materials, and to glimpse it for even a second; to have the opportunity to contemplate that oneness, feels worthwhile.

Peter Bonner

2009