Drawing Thoughts

Issue 20 January 2016

On Drawing

Deanna Petherbridge CBE is an artist, writer and curator primarily concerned with drawing. Her practice is drawing-based (predominantly pen & ink drawings on paper), although she has also produced large-scale murals and designed for the theatre. She was Professor of Drawing at the Royal College of Art from 1995 to 2001 where she launched the Centre for Drawing Research, the first doctoral programme in drawing in the UK. Her book ‘The Primacy of Drawing: Histories & Theories of Practice’, was published June 2010 in the USA and UK. It examines the importance of drawing as significant practice in Western art history from the fifteenth century as well as its relevance to contemporary artists working with multiple practices. She will be showing a selection of drawings from across her oeuvre at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester from 3 December 2016 to 4 June 2017. In this exclusive interview she discusses her work and her thoughts on drawing.

Spatial Manoeuvres: The Drawings of Angela Eames

Angela Eames is a drawer and lecturer. Her research is concerned with extending drawing practice in the development of new approaches to drawing in relation to technological developments. Her visual practice utilises all drawing media from autographic procedures, through computing (two and three-dimensionally) and moving image. She has been working within drawing and computing specifically since 1987 and has exhibited work (from drawings in graphite on paper, through large format digital imaging, through to video pieces) in this country and abroad.

Drawing and Educating

Professor Anita Taylor is a practicing artist, exhibition organiser, published writer and Dean of the School of Art and Design, at Bath Spa University, UK. Prior to becoming the Dean Anita was Director and CEO of the National Art School in Sydney, Australia (2009-13); Director of The Centre for Drawing, a University-wide Research Centre of the University of the Arts London, and Dean of Wimbledon College of Art. She is the founding Director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize project, the pre-eminent annual open exhibition for drawing in the UK.

Touching the Surface

Wendy Smith’s work is about line: an accumulation of single, straight, hand drawn lines that are forged through a process of repetition and refinement into various relationships until a final image emerges from the surface as an object suspended in space like a fragile structure. The initial impact of each finished work is one of astonishment that such objects can be handmade.

Lost in Translation

A custom made robot that responds to a series of texts and makes drawings unique to each reader. Readers are invited to step up to the lectern and read into a microphone from a specially made book called Lost In Translation. The book consists of passages from The Bible, The Torah, The Quran and a take away menu. The text and voice are interpreted via software and a robot is set into action on a custom made plinth to interpret what it all means.

Drawing as a way of knowing

“My current work is about drawing as a way of knowing and about knowing about drawing as a way of knowing”. Gemma Anderson is an artist, researcher and university lecturer whose practice is at the interface of art and science. She has worked on different collaborative projects with mathematicians and natural scientists and has recently completed her PhD ‘Drawing as Epistemology for Morphology’. She is currently artist in residence for the Northern Ireland Science Festival (2016) and also at Imperial College (Mathematics department).

Drawing and Climate Change

The inspiration for Zaria Forman’s drawings began in early childhood when she traveled with her family throughout several of the world’s most remote landscapes, which were the subject of her mother’s fine art photography. In August 2012 Forman led Chasing the Light, an expedition sailing up the NW coast of Greenland, retracing the 1869 journey of American painter William Bradford and documenting the rapidly changing arctic landscape. She continues to address climate change in her work. Recent achievements include participation in Banksy’s Dismaland, speaking at a live TED event at the Town Hall Theater in NYC, and a solo exhibition at Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York in September and October of 2015. In this exclusive interview, Zaria Forman discusses her drawings and her artistic role in communicating climate change.

Five Paragraphs and Seven Pictures

Critics have commented on the lyricism and exuberant colour of James Faure Walker’s paintings, surprising given that since the eighties computer graphics has been central to his work, alongside oil paint and watercolour. They have also mentioned his independent stand, using photos of pedestrians, birds, shops, at the same time as having developed an ‘abstract’ language. As Stuart Morgan wrote in 1985, “His doubt may lead to one of those careers which bridges older and newer practice, and which opens more doors than it closes”.

Drawing Color

Artist, Maureen McQuillan, explores aspects of growth and unpredictability, repetition, replication and imperfection in the process and activity of drawing itself. “Currently, I am making drawings that flout the traditional separation between line and color in Western aesthetics and explore the possibilities inherent in my own incredibly flawed system of color investigation.”

The Tattoo: Drawing on the Body

Today, tattoos are seen everywhere. Paraded on the streets, on television and even in celebrity culture. Danielle Groves reveals the significance of the history of tattooing in various cultures and how this has influenced modern times. In this article she discusses the evolution of technology and imagery, how women have impacted on the ‘New Tattoo’, and the key movements that pushed underground art into the mainstream.

Testing

Jaq Chartier’s paintings explore scientific methods through experimentation with paint and process. All of her works are “tests” to discover something about materials and what they do. Inspired in part by images of DNA gel electrophoresis, Chartier investigates the migration of various stains through layers of paint and acrylic gels.

Drawing Out the Dross

Eve Andrée Laramée has been exploring the mutable, triadic relationship between art, science and nature for over twenty years. “I am interested in the ways in which cultures use science and art as devices or maps to construct belief systems. I try to draw attention to areas of overlap and interconnection between artistic exploration and scientific investigation, and to the slippery human subjectivity underlying both processes….”

Paying attention – the disappearance of Rosa

Paying attention – the disappearance of Rosa ‘One way to achieve a more tranquil state of consciousness is through aesthetic perception. This is a special state of perceptual consciousness, where we apprehend some spatio-temporal object and discern through this object, the Platonic Idea that corresponds to the type of object in question. In this special […]