The Line

I accumulate my position and practice in relation to drawing as one of the things drawing can be, but not what it is. 

My relation and informant to drawing lies in two areas; firstly, the activity of drawing, within the act itself, and secondly, towards the line, which stems to and from drawing as practice.

Drawing itself is a physical engagement, the coalescing of thought and action. It is an exploration of spatial issues consisting of relational comprehension identified by bodily enactment of the individual, bound up in the senses encompassing more than just sight/vision. The relation to it as activity is one involving all the senses, such as touch and movement, it isn’t often termed an ‘exercise’ for no reason.  How you (I) become involved in a drawing is a spatial and haptic thing. The activity itself is inherent and I approach all mediums in the same way regardless of its material disposition, the process and physical engagement with it is always the same. This engagement is key to note because if the way drawing is attended to, it’s very process, is continued as a matter of extension, then this position can make anything a drawing because you (I) approached it as one. 

The line (informed by drawing) ‘attests to an absolute and all absorbing need…to keep on the move.’ (May S. 2010; 1) A self-reliant, autonomous, and tentatively confident thing, the line is borne on self-propulsion, unconcerned with where it’s going but the direction it requires to get there. Everything about the line can speak of its potential, the space it’s opening into, and its look of curious intent, what it might touch. Like drawing, the potential of the line is ungraspable and uncertain; it is a question and an enquiry simply because of its searching nature as it tapers and points to reach for its next space of focus.

‘Extension, that is, ex-tension – leaving the surface and thus escaping surface tension – was lines next solution.’ (Butler & De Zegher, 2010; 34) The line itself is an object, in many cases it appears as a very thin rod, however, once the line leaves the surface of a two-dimensional plane it then becomes something more: now its three-dimensional status is in full existence and the contrasts of its fragile and sculptural nature come into play. As ever it is flexible and responsive- with the line as sole subject it initiates its self-concern because it is of and about itself as thing, object. But it is also concerned with everything else in its surround because it takes its position in relation to something else; ‘the line draws on relations as much as relations draw on the line’ (Butler & De Zegher, 2010; 23).  It pulls out and weighs on its surrounding space because this constitutes its space of intention. The line is always moving, and it is because its movement deals with and space that makes it a physical subject, as material, tangible thing. I seek to thicken the line’s presence in space within my practice.