GMU:Drawing: the natural-scientific gaze/Maria

Mark Making

During the first class of the module we all had a discussion about what the word 'drawing' meant to us. We decided that drawing was a way of creating a subtle line of any description, with any material. This line can be a performance, a representation of something, or an abstract creation using artistic concepts. It does not simply mean picking up a pencil and creating a lifelike representation of an existing image.

However I found the term 'drawing' to be too reminiscent of strictly traditional non-abstract media and also to be limiting creatively. To change this mindset I prefer to call drawing 'mark making' as I find that referring to it as this to have far greater potential to make a piece of work that I find both interesting and visually stimulating. This also gives me a much wider range of materials to work with, both mixed and traditional media. This helps me greatly as I prefer to create rather abstract and concept based artwork.

Early Works

Early on in the class we started the mark making process by recreating some images of different types of cells from the human body, taken with an electron microscope. I decided that I would try to represent these as accurately as possible, culminating in the below image. We then had to re-arrange the image aesthetically and as my mark making was 'accurate', this did not create a piece of work that I consider to be successful. From this I learned that an abstract approach to the details is best for this module and thus any mark makings will look much more intriguing visually.

Other Mark Makings

I became inspired by the work of Paul Klee and his insect-like drawings. I found his abstract and experimental approach to drawing to be very interesting so I tried to add some element of his experimentation into my work.

Soon after this I had a strange dream which I documented in my mark making work. I dreamt that I was in my bedroom, which was a large white room. I was staring at the wall opposite my bed and on the floor I could see a winding trail of swarming ants. The ants were carrying matches, some in boxes and some lit, all walking in a long line into a small, dark hole in the skirting board. Some of the ants were wearing crowns. I did not know why the ants were there, but the image was so strong in my mind that I created several pieces of work that were inspired by my dream.