One of the things I have to bear in mind on a case by case basis is just how far do the arms extend? In an ideal world, I'd only be drawing the fingertips, but then you lose visual language. The story, the message is lost. So it's a compromise from the start, in a way.
I like the fact that the actions are not obvious. But there has to be enough shape there for the hint of a story to unfold. To see that these are hands. But is it just one person? Two? More? How close are these people, is there intimacy or distance? What stories are being told in peoples heads?
I like the fact that the actions are not obvious. But there has to be enough shape there for the hint of a story to unfold. To see that these are hands. But is it just one person? Two? More? How close are these people, is there intimacy or distance? What stories are being told in peoples heads?
The next week or so I am moving on from hands, to lips and mouths, possibly feet. Feet I am less sure of, as that may be too unrelated. I simply like drawing feet. But they are still a part of some of my cherished physical memories, albeit as a passive actor so... lets see how that works going forwards.
The ultimate form of this, as my uncomplicated animal brain understands it, to make people understand the feeling of this would be to literally strip them down, blindfold them and then touch them in the ways that touch has been or is being deployed in these works, in my memories. Then there would be an understanding, and the participants would then have memories of their own to take home and live with. Obviously and understandably there are issues of trust and consent here, that cannot be overcome, so in a way I am working from a place of initial compromise, to an ideal that can only ever be compromised. It kind of fits.
In a way what I am thinking of is the opposite of artists such as Milo Moire or Marina Abramovic, whose works invite audience participation in the opposite direction. Here is the artist, they said. Here is your invitation. What will you do with it? Abramovic's The Artist Is Present was the unquestionably braver and most groundbreaking of the two and involved the possibilty of actual harm, even death, to herself, while Moire's Mirror Box (NSFW) was less obviously dangerous, but more intimate and sexual. Moire blurs a line between art and pornography, and yet still draws from from Abramovic, as I draw a line on a further tangent.
Thoughts for the future, anyway. For now, until I can move again (currently under Governmental shielding orders and having a busted knee) I shall continue to draw the feeling of the touch of my memories.
