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 drawing map 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 subject was actually about. Anyone who's tried to paint a self-portrait knows the problem, having to reassemble the face we see only as a thinning hairline, or pimply chin.

But now I've lost that familiar face: the garden is trashed. Drawing from direct observation I'm like a child confronted with a strange map, see a patch of grass that looks like a bird, another like a man's head sporting a pointed hat. These associations increase when drawing directly from the subject. The photograph below shows how I've distorted distance and proportion.  Could it be that  these associations 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 destruction? The fall of Greece or Rome?

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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