What does making mean?
Nowhere else can I find the feeling I get when making art. Is it a kind of concentration? The concentration that takes me somewhere else, like a kite in the sky, tethered to the kite flyer by a barely visible thread? Is it something I can only grasp in the act of making art, or does nothingness devour me when I’m not creating? Or is it the satisfaction of doing whatever I want? Or perhaps I simply like the smell of graphite in the studio, the sound of charcoal gliding across the paper, the touch of a fresh page in the sketchbook, and all the things in this world that are so dear to look at? Or is it the relationship where, as long as I cling to art, art will never flee from me?

How to paint and draw? What is painting and drawing at all?
In looking? In nature, the earth we live in and with? In the materials we use to paint and draw?
Looking
Things start losing their space and volume when we look at them with great concentration. As if we are the immature painter, caught up in the details and the tricks between light and shadow, forgetting to see things as independent objects in space. As if we are melted into the world we are looking at.
Nature/Earth
If you have ever seen clouds gathering over the horizon when the first twilight beams through the gap between the bottom of the clouds and the gentle spine of the earth, you may see the clouds coated uniformly in deep blue-grey, like the silhouette of one monstrous body, without back or front, left or right. But as the sun rises, a sheet of translucent light covers the clouds farther away from the sun with cool, ethereal blue, while the darker clouds closer to the sun are traced out by a rim of gold. You then see that there’s no one body of clouds, but clouds at the front, clouds at the back, floating among the sky. I’m always puzzled by sunrises like this.
Materiality
Dust of burnt wood is smudged onto the paper woven with strands of plant fiber; reeds are sharpened and dipped into the brown ink strained from the putrefied walnut husks. Egg yolk is passed from palm to palm, the thin membrane pinched between the thumb and index finger, and punctured to drain the silky liquid inside, which binds pigments into paint. Oil glazes diffusive light, casein paints muted wash. Pencil traces velvety shades, silverpoint shines metallic sheen.
Materials, with their unique qualities, bespeak the possibilities in making, yet making, with its ingenious creativity, transforms the materials into something more than what they were.

2025 Mar 17