Reflections of Self - 2024 01 16

 


The work I do at my art desk speaks an allegorical language. It speaks to me as I am in the midst of collecting and then working on drawing the image. It speaks to me after I step away from the image. It speaks to others in its various stages of completion.

It speaks a visual language. The subject of the image. The quality and organization of the pencil lines. The comportment and composure of the composition. The size of the work, the scale of the image. The relationship between figure and ground. The relationship between light and darkened areas. 

It speaks in a language in constant dynamic formation between centrifugal forces that seek to keep things apart and centripetal forces that strive to make things cohere (Bachtin et al., 1981). It speaks in a language that is fragile, with meaning emergent and declining in relation to our individual reading and understanding, but also the context within which we encounter the language. 

I may not necessarily have the words to describe the allegory, although I recognize it in the context of my own remembered present (Edelman, 2005).  In any given moment, consciousness is a process, not a thing. At any given moment, my consciousness, as I experience it, is engaging my past experience in forming my integrated awareness of this present moment. Each moment is a continuous process of remembering and integrating, of making sense in the context of how I make sense of myself at this moment. In this experience, I am in the presence of the drawing and the allegory is emerging through my remembered present, the process of integrating what I have know up to this point and what I might know now.

What does this small drawing of my beloved dog tell me about my Self at this moment? She is looking off to the left. She looks curious, not afraid. She is paying attention, she is not letting her guard down. Her body is facing me but her head is turned. Is there something coming in from the side, something in my peripheral vision that I need to pay attention to? The drawing itself is a ephemeral collection of squiggling graphite lines that cohere an image of a whole subject. It is possible that I am in the middle of a similar process in another field. There are new inputs coming from different directions and I need to pay attention but I do not need to be afraid.

That helps.


Bachtin, M. M., Emerson, C., & Bachtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: 4 essays (M. Holquist, Ed.). Univ. of Texas Pr.
Edelman, G. M. (2005). Wider than the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness (Nota Bene ed). Yale University Press.

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