The Charcoal Drawings

The Charcoal Drawings

Creative process

In 2020 during lockdown I virtually attended a collective exercise of “DRAWING BREATH” led by renowned artist Alastair MacLennan
It was part of a colloquium entitled IN AND EASE with the curator in conversation with Alastair MacLennan about his archive and the online exhibition of new drawings.

Hosted by the Cooper Gallery at DJCAD/Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee
Alastair was my tutor during my Masters in Fine Art in Belfast, University of Ulster.

He is a person I admire, a great artist and mentor ,a very kind, gentle and generous man.

He has been one of the driving forces behind Bbeyond , the artist collective I belong to, who encourage and support live performance art.

In the “DRAWING BREATH” exercise I related to Alaistairs’ practice of first meditation and then allow the body to be intuitive, with elements of chance.

Breaking away from the formal training of looking and drawing with acquired technical skills.

Connecting to the breath, the body, to deeper within the self.
Breaking from my common thought patterns of analytical critical mode for assessing my students work and also my own creative art practice and production.

I created several works on paper with a variety of charcoal sticks. 

The titles are descriptive of the process.

In addition, I contributed to and exhibited one of the drawings in Lim(i)nal

 LIM(I)NAL – an evolving online exhibition of new drawings by artist AlastairMacLennan along with drawings by others made in response to his score, via an open submission.

Charcoal Drawings

The work presented here

A series of Charcoal Drawings from collective exercise of “DRAWING BREATH”

Each work has a title that is descriptive of the process of creation.

E.g. Blind draw means with eyes closed or not looking at the paper.

Each drawing is photographed as a drawing on paper.

Then as the drawing with a black window mount. Another photograph of a detail of the drawing.

Then you are shown options for hanging the work

Hanging it upside down or on its side it becomes a different drawing.

You may choose which position you prefer.

Then it will be framed in a manner so that you hang the drawing in the way you choose.

As the back of the plain brown mounting board, the artist will handwrite signature, date and title the work.

A personalised sentence can be added if you wish