Some thoughts do not require
words.
They require a line, a colour,
a rhythm.
Shapes do not merely illustrate an idea.
They think.
A single stroke, on its own,
transforms the space.
The sheet of paper is no longer a blank surface.
The pencil moves forward, stops, then starts again.
A little pressure is enough to thicken a line.
A shift changes its direction.
Something appears and already demands to be
looked at again.
One line calls for another line.
I bring it closer, I move it further away, I interrupt it.
Every gesture alters what was there before it.
One shape displaces another.
Every decision rearranges the whole.
Nothing exists in isolation.
Everything becomes a relationship.
I do not necessarily know what the
drawing will be before I begin it.
I do not seek to execute an image that has already been
constructed.
I observe what the first gesture produces.
Then what the next one transforms.
The drawing progresses through a series of
successive consequences.
A shape appears.
It creates a situation that I hadn’t
entirely anticipated.
I look again.
I add a line.
This line transforms the shape to which
it responded.
What I was looking at a few seconds ago
no longer exists in quite the same way.
I must look again.
The drawing progresses in this way.
I bring two shapes closer together. Their
relationship changes.
I move a third one further away. The whole composition is
redistributed.
I break off a line. The space it leaves behind
suddenly becomes visible.
Every gesture transforms the conditions
for the next one.
What I have just done alters what I
can do next.
I seek a sense of rightness that did not exist
before the drawing.
It isn’t waiting for me somewhere.
It emerges as the forms
appear and transform.
The right decision exists only on the basis of what
is already there.
The thought was not entirely there before
the drawing.
It is also constructed in what happens on
the page.
A form raises a question.
The next one does not necessarily answer it.
It transforms the question.
The drawing does not give form to a
pre-existing thought.
Every stroke transforms what I can
think after it.
I do not draw what I know.
I discover what the drawing allows me
to think.
