Ron Curran
'We all have our language. For most of us the language is already there; it's just buried or encapsulated or frozen underneath ten tonnes of iceblock fear. The language isn't always just sitting there in our hand; we have to wait for it to land.' - Ron
Simply Dynamic Drawing
‘The true work of art is one which the seventh wave of genius throws upon the beach and which the undertow of time cannot drag back.’
- Cyril Connolly
There is a popular misconception / myth as to what drawing is about......... what makes for good drawing.
Right from an early age, most of us are given a recipe (like eggs and flour) as to what drawing is. ‘These are the things you need to do to be an artist. These are the job criteria.’
You have to ‘get it right’..... ‘you need to get it perfect’..... ‘it has to be life-like’..... ‘it’s got to look realistic, look like the subject’..... so you need to learn to draw ‘properly’..... learn perspective etc. etc.
We are hit over the head with this from the year dot. But in the face of the history of art, this is simply not true. It’s been more about people doing quite different things, quite radically different things. It’s been a history of challenge. Of people consciously questioning and challenging the status quo, the so-called ‘rules’ (of perception) and returning their experience back to themselves / to a more intimate viewpoint....
... and this ‘intimacy’ (this personal way of seeing), when taken far enough,
can be striking, can have spectacular results. It’s that simple seed of originality, given nurture and opportunity, that has been the thing that root and branch, has produced the great art.
But most people feel precluded or somehow culturally excluded because they are repeatedly told that drawing is all about those who have talent, those with dazzling technical skills, those who are born with ability, the elite few etc. etc.
This is a completely destructive myth which, unfortunately, most people have been continually subjected to and have been forced to swallow, hammer and tong, most of their lives. So it is therefore forgiveable (and understandable) that most people fall into believing this, when you consider it is the only version of ‘how to draw’ that most people have ever been exposed to. They have had it rammed down their throats all their lives!
But it is essentially the ‘commercial illustration’ version of drawing, the illustrative ‘pictorial’ version that has very little to do with ‘free expression’.
‘There is no must in art, because art is free.’
Wassily Kandinsky
This ‘constructed’ version of drawing is more about employment, social credo, commercial production and craft than it is about real or pure drawing.
Recognising this one massive and critical distinction is probably the single most relevant point in gaining an understanding of what drawing is really about. Until this is grasped, you are literally not even ‘on the bus’.
From the very start the ‘act of drawing’, i.e. of drawing in a pure and expanded sense, is virtually all about ‘unlearning’ or ‘undoing’ this very entrenched and destructive myth. To be victim to this ‘fundamentalist’ version of drawing is about as akin to someone being held prisoner by a sect. So, in a way, real or pure drawing is a kind of ‘cult-bust’. To break people out of that way of thinking. To return people back to their original creativity.
‘Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.’
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
To draw means it is imperative to return to your own structures, your own inherent perspectives, to discover your own stories, to regain your own power.
You can’t just borrow that off someone, repeat or imitate someone else. You need to return what you experience back to it’s original owner, namely you!
What you experience is unique, it’s your god given right and that is ultimately what you must pursue.
‘Art will be compulsive, or art will not be at all.’
Patti Smith
So risk, passion..... sacrifice, courage and commitment are all part of ‘art stuff’..... so is ruthless self-examination and total abandonment. This is all part of the adventure, it is where drawing really begins.
It means having to make a conscious break from the cosy, ‘copy book’ way of thinking and drawing and to be willing to step out of your comfort zone..... in fact, to ‘renovate’ your whole thinking and attitude as to what the word ‘drawing’ or ‘art’ really means. You have just stepped into the space of ‘radical review’.
This can, and quite often does, create quite an upheaval for those who are unprepared or unfamiliar with these ideas. It is not easy but if you just let go, you might be surprised at what exquisite dimensions or panoramas will unfold before you.
‘When a man takes one step towards god, god takes more steps towards that man than there are sands in the worlds of time.’
The Chariot
Just simply visually re-hashing a subject in front of you is not drawing. It is mechanical and non creative, in fact it is a kind of visual co-dependence. Technical illusionism is not drawing. Visuality is one layer of drawing but it is far from all that drawing is. It is one manifest (or recognisable) part of a much larger process. This one widespread, culturally propagated myth has alienated and driven more people away from drawing and ever having the confidence to draw than anything else.....
..... simply because they believe they don’t fit within that selective, elitist set of (absurd and fallacious) criteria that is popularly called ‘proper drawing’. They are deemed then somehow ‘failures’..... by who?!..... and with what possible authority?!
It is a myth that prevents thousands of people from ever finding the confidence to draw or to explore their creativity or to give full witness and expression to their experience, their unique poetic.
Dynamic Drawing class is directed towards busting this myth and returning drawing back to its rightful owner..... namely you, the individual..... its purest source, the one most naturally qualified.
‘You use a glass mirror to see your face. You use works of art to see your soul.’
George Bernard Shaw
Everybody works in different ways, at different speeds and in different spaces. You simply cannot regiment that. Nor can you actually name it. Every class is different - different day, different gig.
People need that opportunity, that intimate ‘inside of you’ recognition..... and in a way that’s what drawing is. It’s the way you are drawn through and the way you witness the multiple perspectives of an experience in a really personal way.
‘Dynamic Drawing’ does not tell you how you should draw but offers you strategies on how you can develop your own ‘drawing language’, your visual translations and testimonies. It (the class) creates conditions in which such ‘drawings’ can occur. Drawing is a latent presence in everyone. The imagery, the narratives, the histories are already written within us, and it is written in a uniquely personal dialect and no force on earth can change that. Pure, free drawing offers that opportunity to explore one’s core experiences and it translates and structures them into vivid realities. It’s really very simple. It’s developing a practical consciousness and re-engaging with who you really are..... and that can be incredibly inspirational.
‘I shut my eyes in order to see.’
Paul Gaugin
So drawing becomes more of a process of self realisation than imitation.
All the best art is original and flows from original energies.
There is no more just one way to draw than there is one language in this world. The promotion of this idea i.e. one way to ‘properly draw’ is about as realistic as the ‘flat earth theory’.
The subject is ‘out there’..... that ‘thing over there’..... ‘you have to get it right’..... we’ve all heard it. And that’s fine if you are doing pictorials say for the covers of magazines or making images to promote or sell something..... you are then creating ‘saleable objects’ not art. That’s fine if commercial illustration is what’s on the agenda. But if you are talking about how something registers with you, how it makes you feel, what it sets off in your soul and how it pulses through you, then you are talking about something entirely different. You are talking about drawing and all it’s multiple and poetic layers. There is no separation of interest..... what moves you becomes an inexorable part of that description.
So how do you ‘talk about that’, talk about the way you are ‘signalled’ (touched or moved)? It is by ‘mark-making’ (setting up your ‘visual territory’). This is of absolutely primary importance in drawing..... how marks on paper read out and visually structure experience from within. Mark making is the meditative breath of drawing. And this brings up the really awesome notion that pure drawing is actually a philosophy, an attitude..... really monumental and multi-dimensional..... but drawing really begins with the realisation of this notion..... to ‘grock’ this is to begin to understand what drawing really is.
Most people’s ideas on drawing come from the school system tradition or formulaic newsagent books on how to draw - ‘horses, dogs, faces etc.’ or some sort of vague antiquated academic theory..... when in fact drawing is about being fully on the pulse of who you are, your immediate culture, context and realities.
‘We must never forget art is not a form of propaganda, it is a form of truth.’
John F. Kennedy
The strategies, structures and techniques used in ‘Dynamic Drawing’ have a direct bearing on the notion of the artist as individual. It takes courage to break out of the mould..... to start to move and ‘loosen up’. It is as much a philosophy as it is a meditation.
Drawing only starts when that philosophical dimension (with all its strategic adjuncts) is realised. To break out of that strait-jacket of popular mythology is as much about drawing as it is to pick up a pencil and make your first mark on paper.
‘With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.’ Norman Mailer
An Introduction to Dynamic Drawing
Myths & Visions
In our present day culture, drawing or the idea of drawing is presented or indeed promoted as a particular kind of skills based product with a steadfast set of principles / desirable criteria etc. Among these criteria is the expectation that the work should display a firm grasp of the principles of perspective ie.vanishing point, proportion, relative size and position in the picture plane. That is the traditional idea of an accurately recorded visual description of the subject. And that subsequently the form or subject observed is also described in ‘proportion’ or within the context of the picture plane etc. And that equally the light source that plays upon that form is also observed and becomes a component of that formal description that then further enhances the pictorial idea of that image. And part of that myth being that one must have a really devilish knowledge of anatomy and form so ‘I can tell what it is. It looks real.... or it looks exactly like that.’ And if colour is part of that process then yes, the colour also needs to be recorded in a way that corresponds ‘realistically’. It is also ‘desirable’ in this criteria list that the ‘student’ displays a solid understanding of all the tried and true principles upon which the institution of drawing is based. And this is, after all, the ‘proper way to draw’.
This idea is so comprehensively and so totally and so unashamedly promoted in our culture that it is almost impossible to avoid it or not to be overwhelmed or somehow influenced by it. The school system largely promotes it (although thankfully in some places this is beginning to change). Newsagents sell it, books on ‘how to do the portrait’, ‘how to draw the figure’, ‘how to draw horses’ etc. etc.........amongst the books on how to decorate cakes and Xmas trees. Most bookshops are the same. But sadly, very few of these same places have anything that deals with or talks about the critical notion of the philosophy of drawing as seen in the context of the history of art or about the hugely important notion that is at the heart of what the creative process is... that of individual translation. Drawing is promoted as a craft based institution. The ‘established academies’ are the same. You get your credit points if you do ‘as instructed’. There is a defined and absolutist process. Quality is regulated and there is very little room for deviation. Essentially, it is a straight jacket.
These are largely training grounds for the teaching of process-based pictorial illustration or, that is, commerce based employment in the commercial art world. Which, in itself, is not actually wrong but the damage is done when all this is lumped under the name of ‘drawing’ ........that straight away an assumption is made.
That is, the use of the word ‘drawing’ is institutionalised under the word ‘proper’. That by doing so one is immediately, largely turning one’s back on the whole of what drawing is in terms of the history of art. Turning one’s back on the idea of what ‘pure drawing’ is and what this means in intimate terms. To talk about drawing as a ‘fixed institution’ or as being ‘proper’ is misleading in the extreme.... and in an aesthetic sense is simply absurd.
In other words, in our culture, drawing has (like so many other things) been institutionalised or commodified and repackaged as a saleable product. In the way that it is sold has very little to do with the notion of pure drawing. If one cares to look at it further, then it could quite easily be said that a lot of the so-called ‘high-art galleries’ like the stock market or like thoroughbred horse stables have developed into ‘corporate fixtures’ that have very little to do with art in the pure or creative sense of the word but more to do with fashion, profitability, marketing, networking and nepotism etc. For example, some of the greatest works in the world - Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Kandinsky, Gauguin etc. are kept in safes or vaults in Tokyo, London, New York etc..... never to see the light of day. What a terrible and sad irony when the very nature of these works was all about being seen.
So drawing, in a sense, has become a kind of commodity in the mainstream. It has become reduced, crafted and marketed and is largely used as part of commercial currency. Benchmarks have been set up. There are very established notions of acceptability, which are usually immediately bracketed with ‘I know what it is’ school of thought or ‘that’s obviously done by someone who knows how to draw’..... in other words, drawing has become associated with it’s level of immediate recognisability and secondly it’s saleability. These are incredibly hard chestnuts to crack because in our culture we have been hit over our head with this idea since the year dot. It is the dominant paradigm. To suggest that these assumptions of quality or these tightly fashioned criteria are open to challenge is in some quarters seen as a kind of heresy. However, if one takes even a cursory look at the history of art, that is the history of drawing, one very soon discovers / realises that there are, in reality, among the major artists, wildly differing notions of what it actually means to draw. In the dynamic drawing classes, I am interested in the notion of drawing as a philosophy. More as a description of fundamental and intimate personal experience, not just some pictorial re-hash of a visual object or a cute, clever but ultimately pointless bit of visual illusionism.
That is not what the creative experience is about, nor is it what the history of art is about. To begin to draw is to begin to adventure. To investigate, to discover and to translate one’s experience (no matter how exotic or removed or different that may be). To surrender one’s assumptions about any, or even all, of the notions of what is real or has been suggested as acceptable or legitimate creatively. To surrender equally any academic or cultural notions of so-called desirable style or technique. Drawing is inherently conflictive, ambiguous, delinquent and equally revelatory and unpredictable. To try to sedate or civilise or suppress that notion is ridiculous and strikes at and insults what is at the very heart of what drawing is and indeed what it has ever been all about. It is really really hard to break this mindset because it has been inculcated in most of us from a very early age, at almost every level. Issues of comparison, of what is good drawing and what is not, of what is reasonable and acceptable or not etc. etc. It is a huge cultural burden to carry and with it (if one cares to look further, that is if one cares to take this idea a little further) is ultimately associated with really core, fundamental, personal and cultural issues of shame, vulnerability, emotional security, even guilt and anger, issues of glamour, beauty and success come up on the screen. We have never really been shown how to see art! These issues are never really acknowledged. They are shoved into the background, ignored or dismissed as irrelevant or incomprehensible or having nothing to do with the finer values of art and drawing. We have been taught (actually brainwashed would be better) to fear drawing, like one fears the church or the pope. There are a whole range of cleverly manufactured fears that have been spun or embroidered around the ‘myth of the word drawing’. And really, if one looks at this lucidly and soberly, it is actually one almighty hilarious hoax. This invisible arbiter of quality and taste, this mean and twisted judge, this cruel and ever-present monkey on the shoulder, this judgmental ever-present malefic inquisitor needs to be forever banished into oblivion! This state of mind is the greatest enemy of the free release of original imagery and art.
It is criminally arrogant and deluded in the extreme for one person, any person for that matter, to assume to know or even begin to assume to know what another is experiencing. The quality of a work of art is in the extent to which a person is able to relate most fully what is happening for them. That is unprecedented. It is phenomenal, unique and highly personal.
To interfere or try to somehow inhibit or censor that process of intimate translation is an insult and a violation of basic human, creative rights. Leave the judge at the door please!!
Another part of the great drawing myth is that one has to learn to draw ‘properly’ first before one can try anything different. This is straight away a wholly absurd notion because, yet again, it just immediately and primarily negates the whole drawing process as it says and assumes, basically, that there is only one way to draw.... that one is obliged somehow to perform this kind of ridiculous or assumed rite of passage or penance before one can start to freely draw.
To work only with the visual component, to reiterate parrot-fashion the visual story....... and the visual story only, is to believe in the ‘flat earth’ theory of drawing and is, in fact, a kind of ‘visual co-dependence’........ no risk / no vision / no vitality / no instinctive metaphor / no vibe / no outcomes / no inspiration / no mystery....... anonymous, boring and highly predictable...... might as well draw by numbers.
The whole history of art, of pure or free drawing, has been about departure, about investigation, extreme challenge, the dialoguing of experience. It (drawing) has a history of collisiveness, of sacrifice and risk, of the radical reformation of subjectivity. Of wholly new and differing imagery and structures, according to the individual, the genre, the school of thought, the age or the culture. It has never stayed the same. That is, the real history of art has been an ongoing enquiry into reality........not the fabricated, commercialised version of the mainstream or the academy, that is only interested in a saleable product.
In the realm of pure drawing there is no obligation to perform or produce or to in some way pander to some kind of mythical overlord. Or equally to assume that one has to produce some kind of approved of mythical structure. It is a farcical and cruel social illusion that drives many people away from their true potential. It is disempowering, elitist and alienating. Ultimately when this kind of visual fantasising is really looked at, there is not one ounce of truth in it. Yet, it is one of the most pernicious and persistent myths in our whole culture that language is somehow owned and dispensed only by a chosen few and that we are all somehow beholden to that one dictated, limited notion.
When, in fact, the very opposite is true. Every living, breathing being has the capacity, indeed the right, to tell their own incredible story...... to describe their own incredible journey and to speak of that odyssey in their own terms / their own language.
The very nature of the so-called art experience is precisely about this process of ‘exposition’, no matter how exotic or unusual or removed. This permission simply must be given – it is our basic cultural right.
So what we begin to discover within this drawing experience is the movement and exchange of energies. And it is these energies that we become ‘structurally’ informed by....... that ‘inform’ us about ‘what things look like’. That is, we by nature are not informed ‘just visually’. There are layer upon layers of instinctual narratives that emerge during the drawing process. They are not planned or necessarily logical or rationally available....... they are ‘just what happens’.......
When one is drawing, it is part and parcel of the ‘mark-making’ process. This process does not owe anything to anyone, it is wholly ‘irreverent’ in that sense........ but it is what is necessary to be able to describe one person’s experiential process, it is irrevocable and jazzy. You can’t just assume what structure is. Structure has been an ongoing debate throughout the whole history of art. Each person’s energy has been ‘housed’, structurally differently. Each person is ‘informed’ differently. That is, the issue of form is not fixed. It varies radically according to each person’s hit / dialogue / visual theories on a situation and the kind of range of imagery that emerges. As far as drawing goes, we are all ‘governed’ differently. We all speak a different language. If I speak Chinese and you are born Russian, how can I possibly expect you to speak Chinese? Drawing is dialectical, that is everyone speaks a different dialect just as everyone signs their name with a different signature. It is just a mass of different visual dialects, manifesting as forms or just pulsing back into pure territorial language or rhythm. You can’t contain that, you can’t define that. In the end, you certainly can’t stop that. It has a kind of ‘creative inevitability’ to it. It is the creative law of evolution. To draw, to ‘dig drawing’, is to grasp that fact.... is to ‘grock’ it. It has all the depth and dimension of the kind of insights or revelations that occur in the practice of meditation. Drawing is endlessly curious and panoramic so for anyone to categorise work or set up artificial boundaries is really very delusional and quite destructive. Drawing can never be defined or wrapped up so cutely. It’ll claw it’s way out..... it’s about survival.
All the catch words like ‘well, that’s realistic’ or ‘that’s abstract’ or ‘that’s modern’ or ‘that’s clever’ or ‘that’s childish’ or ‘that’s skilful’ or ‘isn’t that beautiful’ really mean nothing in the context of the examination of authentic or realised work..... because of all the layering and narratives that come into play in strong or ‘deeply formed’ work. You can’t categorise the effect that strong work has upon you – it is often ever expanding, quite mysterious and without edge. It is often even difficult to see at first. That is, it is often powerful in it’s subtlety and in it’s disordered pluralities and the sheer mass of it’s complex or evocative narratives. At first, it can even seem ugly or confronting, even disturbing but ultimately if it is powerful work, it’s own inherent and consistent signature and it’s range of imagery will emerge as something authentic and strongly classical. It will be read. It will be seen. Strong work makes no apology for what it is, as the moon does not apologise for being in the sky nor for it’s rising or setting. Work that is often primitive, ambiguous, totemic, intimate or mythological is often lazily called ‘naive’. But it is naive to call it ‘naive’. The notion of calling work that is not immediately recognisable as ‘fringe’ or ‘edge’ is assuming there is some kind of mythical fixed position which is seen as acceptable or in some way ‘normal’. Again, this is a negligent assumption. All work needs to be critically examined and appreciated for whatever qualities it may have. All the major artists, that is any major artist worth their salt who have held their position over time, have initially been seen as fringe artists. All the best artists have been ‘ground breakers’ and ‘rule breakers’. When you are talking about drawing, you can’t make any assumptions whatsoever. For every person, there is a different range of phenomena, a different constellation of marks, a different song to be sung. One is informed by the actual act of drawing by the kind of signals one is picking up at the time. To draw ‘pictorially’ or ‘literally’ is to have no real stake or strong connectedness or ‘contact’ with the actual experience. It is a spectator’s position not a participant’s. It is to set up immediately ‘a visual blockade’. It is to only draw externally and to be ‘exformed’ visually only. To become ‘informed’, one has to literally, physically and bodily take that experience on board in quite a dramatic / dense and unpredictable way. It is instinctive / visceral and multi-layered. And a lot of it is just blind and driven energy....... or poetic and meditated signals. Then the idea of the form or subject can become something quite radically different from the image you began with. What emerges from within isn’t necessarily going to equate with what you initially started with. This is, in fact, the ‘translation’ process. The drawing part of this is how you are literally being ‘picked up’ and moved through the layers and spaces of that experience and everything this sets off in you........ you are being ‘informed’.
At some point you have to let go and surrender to the process. You are, in fact, the one who is being drawn by what is being set off in you. So then this brings us to the question of that great divide, which is necessary to cross to develop one’s own language, one’s own real expression. The great divide between illustration and the start of language. Mark making is an integral part of that journey. And that is often where the real challenge begins..... because you have to step out of your comfort zone and it is necessary to both risk and sacrifice.... because you are in a state of creative transition. You are discovering your narratives and your inherent mythology. You are exploring your territory - you are beginning to see your ‘operators’.
It is a naked process of exposure..... but in this ‘exposure’ you begin to recognise literally your internal creative mechanisms, how you work with that energy and how that energy structures out into a kind of inevitable and unique imagery...... and with the sort of signature relationships that emerge, that authentically reflect who you are, you begin to see your face in this mirror.
This is not an easy process because you need to witness ‘who you are’ in a very lucid and often confronting and critical way. You need to develop a strong working philosophy and practice. At some point, it may be necessary to abandon much of or everything you held sacred or believed important or unalienable about drawing. These long term, established beliefs may very well start to come crashing down. It may be necessary then to realise the need to re-engage things more pivotal, urgent and relevant within yourself. This can quite often be a time of great upheaval, even resentment, confusion and anger...... because you are going through the ‘layers’ (of who you are) and it is not necessarily a familiar, rational, predictable or easily understood experience. This transition leaves you vulnerable..... but it is the kind of exposure that assists you into getting an understanding of ‘how it is’ for you...... of ‘how it needs to be’.........it sets in motion your creative mechanism.
Drawing is not a process of totally wrapping something up but quite the opposite. It tears the 'wrapping’ off and it ‘opens up the image’. It can be defining, lucid, comprehensive and ruthless. It can be pure havoc..... but it is the kind of havoc that can land you squarely on your ‘X’ factor. All great art is about those people who have somehow hit upon that ‘X’ factor. Robert Johnson of blues music fame called it ‘going to the crossroads’.
So in drawing, there is always some kind of crossroads, some kind of ‘conflict’ happening........ but it is exactly this kind of conflictive, contradictory, collisive state that produces the best work. It is almost necessary to embrace these upheavals and to recognise and include this dialogue between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ so the evolutionary process of imagery can be witnessed. So, in a sense, at least 90% of what’s happening in drawing is happening in a kind of blind or uncontrolled way....... you are being informed subconsciously or instinctively. The visual layer is only really the very last part of it, the very surface skin of that experience. Your visceral energy and ’knowing’ moves about three thousand times faster than anything in your so-called intellectual life. Your range of imagery, your mythology, is already in there waiting. Drawing develops your visceral wisdom. Language / mark making is your guide. Drawing is very much a philosophy not a craft....... it is necessary to understand that clearly before even picking up a pencil. The kind of alchemy that occurs when you are ‘engaged’ or ‘in contact’ is unique. It is unique for each person. There are no set rules. One is informed through the very act of doing.
To draw is to be absolutely contemporary and parallel to the events that one is surrounded by. Every drawing is the start of a new experience. Every person is governed differently and deserves equal respect. No comparison. No hesitation. No shame.
© Ron Curran
February 2008