notes #

Through drawing I understand the sense of blindness. By going blind in the process of drawing a line, one finds the underlying intuitive strength to follow through the line and to find the rhythm of the drawing or painting from within this intuitive appreciation. It is the same as when reading a poem, I close my eyes and listen to its sounds before actually feeling its underlying senses. Like skiing, one must feel the snow under one’s skis, intuitively understanding the underlying structures, as one follows the rhythm of the snow underneath one-self and simultaneously understands the surrounding structures of the slope. Here, in a split second one must decide where to turn, gain speed, feel and actually sense the contours of the underlying structures, let go and free oneself to be able to push ahead. Suddenly the rhythm is there before one can understand this intellectually or logically. The feeling of freedom and joy fills one’s body. But, if one looks down at the steepness of the mountain and starts to contemplate on what can go wrong, one is almost sure that one will fall and loose the rhythm and freedom all together. This underlying relationship is akin to working with poetic texts, drawing and painting. Derrida writes in Memoirs of the blind, about this sense of blindness and drawing in his philosophical commentaries around vision, blindness and art.

Below
drawings from the process: (“unintended interpretations #”
Pencil & acrylic on paper, Size: 35 *35 cm)

Being in a game of infinite possibilities. Like sailing away in an invisible boat of unuttered thoughts, one accelerates as the storms start to cloud ones vision and one knows in the intuitive strength of the line that one has infinite variable possibilities. Relating to Derrida’s sense of deconstruction, I am continuously meeting texts and lines full of meanings. It is a play of infinite possibilities, just like life, impossible to define, the drawing becomes alive through the possibility of freedom.

drawing from the process: (“unintended interpretations #”
Pencil & acrylic on paper, Size: 35 *35 cm)

Like lines of words on paper, through the reflection of the boat’s shadow, one learns to reflect upon the outer limits of ones being. Thoughts unravel as I play with the wind. The words transform from the definite definitions into a glaze of abstract sparkling water of indefinite depths. The pencil rests in my hand as I release my unuttered thoughts, away from the textual form of the word, beyond any logical concepts; I open up to a dialog of thoughts, free from restraints. It is here in this dwelling of being, one can create and exist. The poetic lines and texts are entrances and pathways to explore, they transect the creative space. Beyond words and visual expression, one can feel at the same time both an intimacy and distance. As I draw a visual abstract line, I can feel the intimacy of an underlying sensitivity, yet I also experience a distance and aloneness to this ephemeral experience knowing I am the sole witness to the moment of the line and the word itself. One knows in the subconscious it will disappear in a flash of a second, burying itself into the depths of the water that surrounds one.

drawing from the process: (“unintended interpretations #”
Pencil & acrylic on paper, Size: 35 *35 cm)

I want to sail away beyond the shadow of the boat. Where the ideas of the soul can glance down like birds that fly past the shadows of ones experience and capture the living moment. Like the birds, the finished painting or drawing exists not insisting on it’s own definiteness, but rather reflecting a sense of freedom of being. One cannot hold onto a bird in flight. Not wishing to catch it, yet painting and drawing touches it’s true being in the presence of the moment.

Cixous states; “I do not want to see what is shown. I want to see what is secret. I want to see the skin of the light.”p.184 Stigmata. Helene Cixous’ words relate to my feeling of this in-between space in which the creative process unfolds. In the mystery of a passage, in the dialog between textual and visual words, a meditation and creation can start to develop through one’s own secret language of the self, as one reflects upon existence, not trying to explain the edges and borderlines of words and thoughts that have been transformed. My logical mind insists in an answer, insisting in showing the traces of the secret, insisting on understanding the poetic lines, and trying to view the visible, the apparent existence of the words or lines. However, from pure logic I will never completely understand. To understand the painting or the drawings, one must also acknowledge the un-visible and unperceived and the illogical. One must release oneself from this logical set of thinking, letting go of the words. Then suddenly, without one understanding it fully, the lines become the birds, the boat, the sea and the attentive feeling arises of freedom of being. It is this state of being, that exists as one draws and paints, a flow of sensibility and compassion is present, as one can take the vessel and move it quietly and invisibly through the sea, through an undulating journey.

drawing from the process: (“unintended interpretations #”
Pencil & acrylic on paper, Size: 35 *35 cm)

(Exploration of the process, “Unintended interpretations #, digital photo)

Picasso said once, (which is interesting in view of Deleuze and Guattari’s writings): ”It is in fact only love that matters, in whatever it may be. They should put out the eyes of painters as they do those of bullfinches, to make them sing better.” My conclusion is to understand that these in-between spaces of understanding and the relationship between visual and textual vocabulary, speak to us through their wisdom, and by creating one’s own language, one understands that being a creator of the space implies compassion and unselfish attention to the presence of the world surrounding one. In this space one can stumble around, sail with no maps, and meet upon the unexpected. Through this space one can therefore stand in the opening of an entrance.

(Painting, acrylic and pencil, Unintended interpretations #, 50*40 cm)

The sensatory experience renders itself visible, opening oneself to the world, the poetic lines flow like music outwards or inwards like water rippling into one’s being. From here, one can draw and paint as an open dialog, like an orchestration of music, shifting suddenly, into a dense subliminal grounding, the music rises and shifts tones quickly and slowly, before and after any preconceived notions are able to grasp the sensations of being. Deleuze and Guattari (1991, What is philosophy?) discuss how artists, for instance painters, writers or musicians, not only create affects in their work but show affects and let us, the viewer, reader or listener, become a part of the affects and pull us into them. They state: ”In each case style is needed- the writer’s syntax, the musician’s mode and rhythms, the painter’s lines and colors- to raise lived perceptions to the percept and lived affections to the affect.” p.170. Through the creative process, I have come to acknowledge that the painting or drawing and poetic text illuminate each other through the inner and outer world, like an open dialog and conversation of infinite possibilities.

(Painting “Of Being”, acrylic and pencil, Unintended interpretations #, 50*40 cm)

Bear with me,
O mystery of being,
for pulling threads from your veil.
w.s