Posting #4

A group of paired (but otherwise unrelated) drawings from several of my sketchbooks in the 1970’s have been added to the ‘Mixed Images’ category.

These diary-like, 11” x 14” mixed media images, presented somewhat randomly, in non-chronological order are evidence of both a compulsive need to record interior & exterior stimuli and the personal credo that ‘drawing is the making of marks’. 

When marks are set down in imitation of something else, or when one unthinkingly drags muddy boots across a floor or even breathes hoarfrost patterns onto a winter window pane, drawings have been made. The signing of a check, the track of a surgeon’s scalpel, the vapor trail of an overhead jet, the pattern of prints through snow are all examples of (perhaps unconscious) mark making that should broadly be regarded as drawing.

Obviously, arranging cut pieces of paper (or any material) onto another surface of paper (or on any surface), is collage or assemblage — but in fact it’s still a variant of drawing. The origin of “photo+graphy” is to write with light. So then, the making of marks, with anything on anything, intentionally or unintentionally, provides an encompassing definition of drawing.