At the outset, a drawing allows for a great deal. A line can shift another,
a colour can open up an unexpected direction.
The relationships are still fluid.
I can move forward, go back, cover things up. Several
paths remain possible.
Then the decisions start to pile up.
Shapes find their distances. The
colours begin to depend on one
another. Certain empty spaces become
necessary. A density appears here, a
breath of space elsewhere. What was open gradually becomes
a structure.
The closer the work gets to its
completion, the more fragile it becomes.
I might think that a drawing becomes more
solid as I build it up. I
feel the opposite. The more precise its relationships
become, the more each of my
interventions affects the whole.
A line extended just slightly can throw
a shape off balance. A colour reinforced by
a few strokes can draw the eye
too strongly. A few millimetres added to a
surface can reduce a void whose
necessity I only
realise when I
threaten it.
The drawing may remain intact and yet
lose what held it together.
That is when the line becomes ambiguous.
The gesture that builds can also undo.
The one that defines a shape can weigh it down.
The one that strengthens one relationship can weaken
another. I never fully know
the consequence of a line until I have drawn it.
Once drawn, it already belongs to the drawing.
My focus shifts.
I no longer look only at the spot where my
hand is at work. I look at what that gesture
might displace elsewhere. A line just a few millimetres long has an effect where I draw it,
but its effects can extend across the whole
sheet.
The smaller my gesture becomes, the greater its
consequences may become.
I then feel a kind of vertigo, like that
of someone who has spent long hours
building a house of cards and is about to
add another card.
Everything holds together because each element now depends
on the others. The fragility does not stem from a lack of construction; it arises from the
construction itself.
It is not merely the fear of failure.
It is the realisation that an almost
imperceptible decision can reshape the meaning of
everything that has gone before.
I can stand in front of the drawing for a long time
before taking action. This pause is not
hesitation. I am gauging how far the whole
can still be shifted. I am trying to
perceive what the next stroke might
reveal and what it might cause to disappear.
At this stage, every addition contains
its opposite.
Building further can undo. Reinforcing
can throw things off balance. Clarifying can close off a
possibility that had, until then, kept the drawing
alive.
I must learn to look, too, at what
has not yet happened.
My attention is no longer focused solely on the
shapes, colours and lines. It is directed
towards their relationships, towards what lies
between them without having a distinct outline of its own.
I am no longer simply looking for where to intervene.
I am looking for what my intervention might
displace.
The line then carries two possibilities within the same
gesture: to continue what is taking shape
or to disrupt the balance that has just emerged.
My hand moves between the two.
