It Begins With a Mark: Capturing the Mundane Through the Found Drawing
If you haven’t heard about my new Mark-Making as Practice Class, you will know about it now. It’s been a huge success, with almost 100 members all supporting one another in developing a mark-making habit. It’s only been a short week into the 12-week class and there have already been some fabulous creative breakthroughs and many who have surprised themselves at what they can do. Encouraging artists to be all they can be, creating a community like this of supportive folks all working toward a similar goal, and my learning from all of it, is why I teach. Thank you, everyone.
I kicked off the class with a Free Lecture It Begins with a Mark: Capturing the Mundane Through the Found Drawing, which was open to anyone, whether taking the class or not and I had almost 160 registered. I’m overwhelmed by the interest in both the class and in the lecture. It seems that many see the power of marks and what they can do for the art and the artist. I’ve been obsessed with marks for over 20 years and I’ve given many variations of this talk many times for various venues. Each time I do new research I’m pleasantly struck that I haven’t seen it all, artists are always continuously and consistently inventing new and amazing ways to make marks.
The replay of the lecture is now only available for members of the Mark-Making Class, but I’ve compiled a list with links of the artists included in the talk. In most cases, I linked to the artists drawings, as the drawing and mark is what I was focusing on in the talk.
I will be making Free Lectures like this one a regular event. If you would like to be in the know as to what’s coming up next so you can register early, sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of this page.
Introduction
Pictured above is The Panel of Hands at El Castillo Cave in Spain. Researchers have dated one of these hand stencils back to 37,300 years ago and a red disk below the hands to be well over 40,000 years old making this disk the oldest mark made by a human. No one knows why these marks were made, but clearly this work was done as an effort to communicate something to the viewer.
As artists, Whatever we do in the course of making work begins as a mark on a surface that is made by one human to be interpreted by another in an effort to communicate.
A Brief History of the Mark Throughout the Centuries
Found Drawings (Found Drawing examples in a future post)
I’ve been interested in and have used found drawings extensively as a concept in my own work for about 20 years or so. The concept of the found drawing was introduced by the Drawing Research Network at Loughborough University in the UK. This is the first research center in the world devoted exclusively to drawing research. Found drawings are defined as by-products of other processes, organic forms or discarded materials; these are images arising by accident or slowly over time, rather than a conscious process.
The analogy I like to use is that if you’re looking at an old wall with graffiti on it, the graffiti is not a found drawing because it was drawn there intentionally. The found drawing is the cracks in the wall or the chipping of the paint.
I linked to the the Drawing Research Center below, where you can read scholarly papers on drawing, see shows and research projects. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything about found drawings because it seems the research on the subject was done before they started archiving the site. I believe I read about them on the DRN site in 2002 or 2003.
More Reading
Translations
I decided to call this segment Translations as The artists in this segment are influenced by their environment and then translate it in various ways in the work. Many are skilled photographers and capture their world in series’ of found drawings imagery. Not letting it stop there at photography, they then translate the image and the emotional connection to it into drawings and paintings. As image is translated through the artist it manifests in remarkable ways, often touching the viewer on an emotional level.
I decided to link the artist’s Instagram account below (if they have one) because there is a tendency for artists to post the photography or (found drawings) that influence the work alongside the work, rather than on their website. In most cases, the artis't’s website is linked to their Instagram account and you can see more there.
Conclusion
This lovely quote beautifully encapsulates the Found Drawing:
I must slow down enough to observe, contemplate and admire the beauty that surrounds me. It is the simple beauty that others may overlook that catch my eye and influence my abstract paintings; the delicate shape of a dried rhododendron leaf, tire tracks in the slush, peeling paint on a dilapidated barn, the elegant drawings of the black, bare branches against a gray sky. My artwork is imbued with a dynamic sense of rhythm, internal energy and the pulse of my natural surroundings.