The light slowly fades, and the colours
take over. The yellow warms the pink
until it blushes. The greens gain
depth. Beneath my hands, the paper
welcomes a winter garden where the seasons
cease to clash.
The first strokes move forward with
hesitation. They seek not so much a shape
as just the right tension.
I do not yet know what my hands
are seeking. They move forward before I can
put a name to what is emerging. They
bring certain lines closer together, push others apart,
and go back over a section that is too
dense. Something is taking shape without me
having decided it. The gesture seems to recognise its
path before I do.
The circles appear one after the other.
Their volumes emerge without leaving the
surface. They resemble, in turn,
fruit, balls of wool, seeds
still closed. Nothing seems to move.
Yet everything remains in motion.
I work like this for a long time. I bring things closer,
I push them apart, I go back over it. My hand meets a
resistance and changes direction slightly.
It senses the distance between two lines, the
pressure of the pencil on the paper, the point where
the movement must pause or resume.
Then something familiar returns to
my fingers.
When I untangle my hair, my fingers
move with the same slowness. They separate,
gather, guide each strand
without ever forcing it.
I’ve known this gesture for so long that
I no longer notice it. My fingers
encounter a knot and slow down. They
move back, search for a way through,
breaking down what resists into smaller parts.
Too much force would break what they
are trying to untangle. So they ease off,
try again, wait.
On paper, my hands rediscover this skill.
I feel the lines before I see them.
The hair slips between my fingers; the pencil
meets the texture of the paper. The sensations
differ, as do the movements. Yet the hand
recognises when the tension is too great. It knows
when to continue, when to stop, when to
go back. In the movement
at hand, a more ancient knowledge
comes to the surface.
I realise then that certain movements do not
disappear when they cease. They
remain accessible within the body. They can
transform into other movements, on other
surfaces, with other tools. Untangling
hair and drawing a line have little
in common at first glance. Yet the same
attention runs through them both: touching, sensing what
resists, moving forward without breaking.
Drawing makes this process perceptible.
My hands do not remember in the same way that I
remember an image or an event.
Their memory tells no story. It resurfaces
in a pressure, a speed, a
hesitation. It appears at the precise moment when
the fingers encounter something and
adjust their movement.
The paper extends the body’s memory.
As I draw, I discover that my
hand does not merely carry out what I ask of it.
Gestures performed elsewhere,
sometimes long ago, silently accompany
the one I am currently
making.
The drawing does not reproduce them. It offers them a
different place in which to act.
A skill acquired by the fingers
whilst facing a knot may reappear when faced with a
line. The surface changes, the tool changes, the
gesture changes. What remains is not its
form, but a way of making contact.
My hand knows how far to go. It knows when to
give way, when to resume.
It knows how to touch without breaking.
