Retroactive Withdrawal, monoprint (archival inkjet print, size and India ink) on paper, 22″ x 30″
An entry is much overdue…thanks for patience. The new work involves an investigation of marks, separated from their original contexts and positioned as compositional elements. It’s a simple process of collage. Scan old drawings, use digital manipulation to isolate, then transform and arrange captures. More often than not, I retouch the inkjet prints after output. So, they originate as hand processed forms, manifest as digital images, and find closure in hand processing again.
Enough about technique.
Question: What is it about?
Specific Answer: This hand altered digital collage (monoprint) is titled Retroactive Withdrawal, an esoteric title which requires some explanation. The term is an academic one, established by universities to allow students who quit attending a class after the deadline for dropping has passed, to be withdrawn from the course without it appearing on their academic record. I have appropriated the term for the title, because extracting select visual information from completed drawings in order to re-purpose and re-image is a form of withdrawing my marks and gestural choices with retroactive intent.
General Answer: These works started as an attempt to address the natural confusion that results from seeing and responding to an endless stream of visual stimuli in ever-changing formats and environments. As I probed and sampled my old drawings, I began to understand the process as something involving memory, history, displacement and identity. I have made and studied art for a long time. My recollection of the past is built on my inclination to look, to analyze and to respond. Perhaps our world is over-saturated with images. Even so, humans will always be compelled to manipulate physical and digital realities, and create platforms for experience based on things we see.
Situation Requiring Wavering Attention, monoprint (archival inkjet print, size, India ink) on paper, 22″ x 30″
Linear marks collected from drawings for this piece span a 32 year period.
Referencing a personal history of mark-making, gestures and randomness collide and overlap, becoming a layered post-graphic barrage of images and information.