I draw from what I see, but the
movement does not go in just one direction. What
the sheet receives from the outside returns to it.
After drawing, my gaze does not
return exactly to its previous state.
The drawing has two presences: one
belongs to the paper, the other to the gaze.
The first remains on the sheet. The
second stays with me as I move away from it.
I take with me neither the lines nor the
colours. I take with me a way of
recognising their relationships.
When I walk, when I observe a
tree, a stone, a blade of grass or a colour, the
drawing continues to take shape.
A gap between two branches becomes
defined. A colour almost absorbed by
another catches my attention. A void makes
the shape bordering it appear. None of this
is new. It is my gaze that is new.
I do not find my drawing in the
world. I encounter relationships to which it
has made me sensitive to.
What I have observed at length on the sheet of paper
prepares my attention to recognise elsewhere
a relationship that does not resemble it. A
proximity, a gap, an intensity are enough. The
drawing does not provide a model. It opens my
gaze to what, previously, would have remained in the background.
Then the movement reverses. What I see outside returns to the page. But the gaze that leads it there has already been shifted by the previous drawings. Seeing leads to drawing.
Drawing leads back to the visible. Between the two,
attention is transformed.
I therefore do not merely draw what
my gaze has encountered. By drawing, I also
prepare what it may encounter
next.
The paper changes, the seasons change, the
body changes, but attention continues.
I leave the sheet of paper. The drawing remains there. My
gaze sets off again with what it has just learnt.
