A few notes to explain the why and how…

Drawing developed into a way of thinking, an attempt to make sense of one’s particular corner
of the world. After years of activity it seems like the hand and brain work as one - this
occurs in many other manual activities, such as playing music. In fact, I rather suspect
that the hand is an extension of the brain.

Beginning…
The use of pen and ink goes back to art school in the 1960s… an economy of materials due to
financial constraints (dip pen, ink and a ream of paper). Given the continuous
activity since, perhaps a testament to the ‘benefits of limitation’?
Ink drawing is direct and definite, decisions are made with little
opportunity for correction. Each piece of work is a tussle, a mixture of getting started
and getting stuck, probably best described in the title to W B Yeats' 1910 poem
‘The Fascination of What’s Difficult’.

Drawing on the Past…
Drawn and engraved images proliferated during the industrial revolution, spreading
knowledge and information. Some of my drawings pick up on this in that they have a
diagrammatic quality that mingles with representative elements - somehow explaining,
but mostly looking for metaphors through graphic techniques that have been used for centuries.
It is important that these techniques only echo the past, and that the work avoids a sense of nostalgia.

External Influences…
Influences have been many and varied. Obviously artists who work in the same field, but
increasingly the work of poets, novelists, composers, film and video - a kind of conversation between
all the arts that comes from an appreciation each other's work.
More pertinently, influence comes from all mark-making, realism, abstraction, commercial art,
uncommercial art, measured drawing, figurative drawing, line-engraving, print, sculptors’ drawings,
silverpoint, chiaroscuro, irony, humour, collage, caricature, chance and accident, etc etc

More on line and mindset…
A drawn line has its own narrative, at the same time as depicting a subject.
Mixing these two strands allow a visual poetry to arise - often happening by chance. The conclusion
of a drawing happens once the image says more than was hoped for initially - a tough task and
an unknown outcome. This unknown outcome has kept me returning to the drawing board for
more than 50 years - the whole operation being an internal conversation between the self
and what evolves on the paper.

The drawings have to speak for themselves, the above are a few pointers to the overall
strategy . If you would like more information please don’t hesitate to get in touch, there’s
a message box below.

In conclusion…
It may or may not be interesting to those reading this that an anagram of
my name turns out to be bitterly ironic…

AVOID INKSTAND


Thanks for visiting the website.

David Atkinson
2024