There is yellow, orange, silver and
navy blue.
The colours do not fill the space.
They give it depth.
They take shape whilst remaining fluid.
They rise, fall, spread out,
and echo one another.
Nothing gets tangled up.
The lines cross without ever losing their way.
Each colour seems to know its rightful place
even before it appears.
I begin thinking I know where I’m going. Then
something turns everything upside down. One colour
calls out to another. A line displaces the one
I was about to draw. A shape that appears beneath my hand
alters the one I had imagined.
I no longer decide on my own.
I observe more than I plan. The
material no longer merely receives my intention.
It points me in a direction I hadn’t
envisaged.
A work of art isn’t decided upon.
It reveals itself as I give it
my attention.
At a certain point, wanting to exert more control
would prevent me from seeing. I must remain
attentive enough to perceive what the
drawing demands and open enough to
respond to it.
The roles are reversed.
I thought I was the master of the material. I become
its pupil.
In the distance, a bird remains alone in the sky.
The storm sweeps across the landscape.
It struggles against nothing.
It spreads its wings and lets itself be carried by the
invisible currents.
It does not command the wind. Nor does it surrender itself
to it. It tilts its wings, receives a
force, responds to it. The wind carries it, but the bird
continues to fly.
I recognise this movement.
So I open my notebook.
I write, then I draw.
I no longer know which of the two comes first.
Words and lines appear in a single
movement. I no longer seek to know which one
leads the other. Each shapes what comes
next.
A shape emerges beneath my hand.
A rose, a heart, a flower.
I could decide what it should become. I
watch what it is becoming.
One curve calls for another. A colour
demands space. A void asks to remain
empty. Each new appearance transforms the next
decision.
I carry on working. My hand traces, chooses, responds.
But something has changed: it no longer imposes
a form on the drawing that it knew in advance.
The drawing begins with what I know.
Then it leads me towards what I had not
yet been able to see.
I thought I was teaching the material what it
was meant to become. It is the material that is teaching me to
look.
