For a while now my first activity of the day after a few stretches and coffee is to draw. I make quick sketches of plants on the back deck and around the yard. Small sketches – usually 2 or 3 to an A4 page with a fine tipped Mitsubishi black pigment ink pen, or occassionally with an old Parker fountain pen. The paper is an inexpensive 160 gsm 24 page pad I found in Big W for $3. The paper is exceptional with a slight textured surface and an off white tint.
This new ritual has been going for about two or three months now but last week I had one of those mornings where two of the drawings on a page were not going well. The more line I added the less sexy they were! I brushed in some Indian ink which made both drawings look like graffiti tags and not the kind of sketch I wanted – as per the above. I developed this daily ritual for eye hand coordation and to keep learning to draw! It’s also become a meditation for the day’s beginnings.
I tore out the two failures and threw the torn page segment in the bin. There was one satisfactory sketch on a third of a page with a ripped edge. After an hour or two I began to reflect on the idea of drawing/art as story where the story is attached to the process – including the frustration, the tearing and the binning with a ripped page remaining and in the drawing itself. The affect and story building of the drawing on the viewer, including the aesthetic appeal or otherwise, is part of the mystery of art for viewers, gallerists, collectors, critics and artists.
Then a new story began to form for me around the binned drawings. I pulled them out and began tearing up the page around and through the failed drawings. I began arranging these bits on found printed encyclopedia pages [ Encyclopedia Britannica] and finally I drew the opening words of a recent Bob Dylan song on two pages: I contain multitudes. The bits of discard became random collage pieces glued to the old print pages telling a story about me , my drawing that morning and the recreation of something new.
I am interested in what kind of story or experience this might trigger for others who read this “art as story” of mine.
It’s important to keep making marks if for no other reason it makes us into better artists so that we can make marks that are good! But it is also important to reflect on the failures and to let an emerging idea out of the failures grab us, find a story evolving around that emerging idea and make work in those moments that leads us to rework bad work – or sometimes to discard it altogether. We will know how to find the path in those moments. This example from my daily ritual is not about a commission or the preparation of a body of work for a group show. It was part of my daily drawing ritual and so this meant I was under no pressure or high expectations that often sits with me when I am preparing for an exhbition or a group show. Because I was able to take more time and did take a more inutive reflective approach to what might be done with the discard, I found I was able to follow a small idea about reworking the “bad art” by listening with intution into working up something entirely different that I am happy with. Inspiration comes and “doors open” when we least expect them to but we must be working and failing and succeeding and being still all in a flow that has us in its gentle grip.
Peter Breen
Peteskibreen's Blog 