Thank you for your note.
I don’t often write much about the drawings as I tend to want them to stand (or fall) on their own rather than be propped up by my words— but there is more behind these drawings…I am interested in in memory— I have a fascination with the way we are marked by time, they way that memory becomes the architecture of our identity and am passionate about exploring various ontologies of drawing.
These drawings weather on paper, envelopes, temporary structures or bathroom walls are one way for me to explore these ideas. They allow me to: engage in drawing as an act, work with binary oppositions—black/white, full/empty, temporality/permanence, strength/fragility, to make drawings that are simultaneously obsessive, physically demanding, time consuming and embracing of chance.
For me the lines are simply a device, a means to an end. They are a way to mark a moment, to make a drawing that is a document of intention and attention rather than a drawing that is a picture of some ‘thing’ -instead these drawings are records.
Aside from a few simple compositional decisions like paper size, or where the first line will begin, the drawings are unplanned— they evolve extemporaneously and end whenever there is prolonged hesitation. The process is almost meditative, the lines are simply lines, they do not describe a boundary or an edge, they describe a series of moments. When the lines are repeated (each line drawn in response to the line that preceded it) the effect of their accumulation is the emergence of structure— a kind topographic rendering of time. With out any explicit effort the drawings begin to suggest volume and space, the use of repetition and accumulation of line alludes to both the passage of time and the processes of memory formation. The topographic structures that emerge conjure the feeling of waves, flowing fabric or landscape and mirror the way a series of minutes or seconds coalesce in our minds into one unified ‘moment’ or memory.
These works are conceptual in nature, despite their traditional materials. As this series began I hated every drawing that was being made— but I enjoyed the process and felt confident in the choices I had made to arrive at this place in my work so I kept making them despite my discomfort.
They still make me feel uncomfortable, exposed, but I have come to accept them, their resulting aesthetic sensibilities and the feelings of vulnerability that accompany them.best,
K
