With time on my hands, became interested in maps again because their layout is similar to the way I see landscape.  Tried to learn the shapes of the new countries in Europe by drawing them freehand. Impossible; the convolutions of a border are only meaningful to those who know the country. Two solutions: "squaring up" (ruling a grid on the the map and to copy it onto an identical grid), or to compare the shapes to something i.e. "Italy looks like a boot".

Mixed media drawing

Mixed media drawingMap of Europe C. 2000. Coloured pencil

Squaring up can impose an unconscious grid into a composition; but visual associations produce random distortion - a bird shape developing a bigger beak, for example. Of the two I preferred the second option because it encouraged lateral thinking - I'd already noticed Bulgaria looked like a dove. Trouble is that different maps of the same country suggested quite different things, but that's another story.

MAPS AND PAINTING

My previous garden paintings were easy to set up (conveniently framed in an upstairs' window) but difficult to conclude. I was just too familiar with the subject, saw it only in disconnected bits. This involved weeks of repainting, to resolve the composition and discover just what each painting was actually about. Anyone who's tried to paint a self-portrait knows the problem, having to reassemble the face we've seen only as a thinning hairline, or pimple on the chin.

But now I've lost a familiar face: the garden is trashed. Like the child confronted with a strange map, see a patch of grass that looks like a bird ; a shadow like a man's head sporting a pointed hat. The strangest thing is that birds, and the man with a hat also appeared in my drawings of the map!  Could it be that  these shapes function like Rorschach blots, revealing something already in my mind?

Temporary plank path viewed from studio. Photograph (May 2003)	Free Association Drawing 2. Graphite on paper (April 2003)

Only painting from these drawings will tell. In Free Association Drawing 2, a classical theme is developing: two planks at the back flip up to form standing columns, others look like scattered marble fragments. Could these objects signify regeneration, the bird a Phoenix? Or is the classical theme a device to represent order from chaos?

Since starting this I've been reading about the Abstract Expressionist, Cy Twombly's mysterious markmaking, and was surprised to learn that his work can refer to Greek and Roman antiquity. (mapping also discussed in  Monochrome Window)
 

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