Question: What is Drawing?

Drawing is everywhere. We are surrounded by it.

We sketch out our plans.We doodle when talking on the phone.

We use drawing to denote ourselves, our existence, within a space. Drawing is part of our interrelationship to our physical environment--making a mark in and on it.

“What is it to draw? How do we do it? It is the act of clearing a path for oneself through an invisible iron wall.” -Vincent van Gogh

Think of:

Foot prints in the snow.Graffiti.Breath on the window.Vapor trails of a plane in the sky.Lines traced by a finger in the sand.Tattoos.

Drawing is associated with human experience. Intimacy, authenticity, immediacy, subjectivity, history, memory, narrative.

Drawing can be:

A map of time recording the actions of the maker.A direct link with thought and with an idea itself.A highly controlled and delicate act, or open and wild.A residue of a memory.

“Drawing is putting a line around an idea. It is not a matter of drawing a tree I see. I have an object in front of me that produces an effect on my mind, not only as a tree, but in relation to all sorts of other feelings. I shan’t get rid of my emotion by exactly copying the tree.” -Henry Matisse

“The graphic line marks out the area and so defines it by attaching itself to it as its background. Conversely, the graphic line can exist only against its background, so that a drawing that completely covered its background would cease to be a drawing…the graphic line confers an identity on its background. The identity of the background of a drawing is quite different from that of the white surface on which it is inscribed…the pure drawing will not alter the meaningful graphic function of its background by ‘leaving it blank’ as a white ground.” -Walter Benjamin

“Drawing is a fusion between the artist’s mind, the artist’s hand, and the beholder’s gaze: drawing is an act of presence and transparency.” -Norman Bryson

“Drawing is a fire, an intoxication of the pencil or of the brush amounting to a frenzy. It is the fear of not going fast enough, of letting the phantom escape before the synthesis has been extracted and pinned down.” -Baudelaire

“A drawing is an active line on a walk, moving freely, without a goal. A walk for walks sake. The mobility agent of a point shifting its position forward.” -Paul Klee

“The distance between reading and seeing has been an ongoing interest for me. Since 1998 I have been exploring this space through the use of letterforms, and have used the letter E as my primary starting point for the last two years. Since E is often found at the top of vision charts, I questioned what I saw as a familiar hierarchy. Was this letter more important than other letters? E is, after all, the most commonly used letter in the English language, it denotes a natural number (2.71828), and has a visual presence that interests me greatly. In my research E has become a surrogate for all letters in the alphabet. It now replaces the other letters and becomes a universal letter (or Letter), and a string of Es now becomes a generic language (or Language). This substitution denies written words their use as legible signifiers, allowing language to become a vacant parallel Language -a basis for visual manufacture.” -Justin Quinn

“I like to draw. It is an activity I rely on, a dependency of sorts.Drawing gives me an immediate return for my effort and the result iscommensurate with my involvement. It is an activity that requiressolitude, it is the most concentrated space in which I work.” -Richard Serra

Drawing can be thought of as gesture: as the marks which bear witness to the precise gesture of the artist and temporality of their production, their medium, their pressure, their speed.

Drawing can be thought of as concept: an attempt to approach the inner image of the artist, the imagination, the memory, perhaps even to reflect its divine origin which, at times, has been thought itself to be a gift of God’s grace.

Perhaps drawing is in-between these two: between gesture and concept, between mark and design.

Drawing is:

A physical and mental labor.A noun and a verb.Always in the present tense. A relationship.Never ending.

In reality, we have a very loose understanding of what drawing is.

Left: Wall Drawing 631 (A wall is divided into two equal parts by a line drawn from corner to corner. Left: alternating diagonal black and white 8-inch (20 cm) bands from the lower left. Right: alternating diagonal black and white 8-inch (20 cm) bands from the upper right. January 1990. India ink. Collection

of Frances Dittmer.) Right: Wall Drawing 614 (Rectangles formed by 3-inch (8 cm) wide India ink bands, meeting at right angles. July 1989. India ink. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the artist.)

‘A walk marks time with an accumulation of footsteps. It defines the form of the land. Walking the roads and paths is to trace a portrait of the country. I have become interested in using a walk to express original ideas about the land, art and walking itself.’Richard Long, Words after fact, 1982