Saturday, November 12, 2011

Blue Sky Thinking...

Today the opposite of tomato is turning off your mind, relaxing & floating downstream...


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

The subject/object matter of the latest drawing to be processed & (re)presented is the rather groovy 'Tea Sub' infuser, something the existence of which was initially brought to my attention last year by A (to whom this drawing especially is dedicated) & most kindly presented recently. In addition to its irresistible aesthetic properties & pop art, retro desirability, it is of course, to leaf tea aficionados such as ourselves, a practical, functional necessity.

In a departure from the habitual mode of representation of such still life objects, faithful to appearances & generally to immediate environmental context, the nature of the little sub, from source, suggested it should be depicted freed from its actual gravitational relation to the horizontal plane upon which it rested in the process of being observed & drawn &, rather, presented imaginatively, as floating, in this instance within the limits of void of the white sheet of A4-sized paper - which might in turn infer something on a much larger, infinite scale - navigating its exploratory passage across.

Prior to the drawing experience, there occurred a moment of visual serendipity as, sitting in bed enjoying a leisurely start to the day, a cup of tea & a little light research, I browsed through the rather attractive illustrated survey volume 'British Artists at Work' & encountered one of the pages featuring representations of the work of Ian Davenport, including some unfamiliar examples of arrangements of small circles in addition to the known compositions of larger-scale poured coloured lines, both of which related rather nicely to the designs on either side of our fab-groovy duvet cover, suitably psychedelic-Sixties...



Soundtrack:


The Beatles 'Revolver'
She & Him 'Volume Two'


Inevitably, the observation of such an object as a yellow submarine led to ‘Revolver’ being given a spin to accompany the drawing process: the sequencing of the track-listing is genius, from the lovely ballad ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ to that singalong favourite itself then to the harsh electric jangle of ‘She Said, She Said’.

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