jennyarntzen.art

  Graphite, pencil crayons on mylar - 9" x 12" I am grateful to my neighbourhood cats who sit long enough for me to record their image. They serve as a worthy subject to process and channel the zeitgeist of this moment through drawing. The cat is wary. It is alert. There is a timeline of destruction tracing across the horizon. We are city folk, living in our coastal urban village. The cats have agency, they have character, they have skills. The cats are my teachers.

  Highlighter pen, pen and ink, pencil crayon on paper - 81/2" x 10" Last evening we sat at the dining room table, me and my friend, Louise. She was practicing drawing with brush and watercolour in shades of grey. I was playing with patterns and sequence in shades of blue, green and violet. As we worked on our drawings we talked about our week, the latest developments, embarrassments, frustrations and victories. I shared new songs, playing imperfectly to convey melodies, lyrics and imagery floating up to the surface in response to life events. My pattern making was also imperfect. There are errors of repetition and sequence. I couldn't remember exactly how the key design worked so I improvised my own based on what I remembered. I would make structural rules for myself and then, lost in conversation, forget what they were and break the rule. Noticing I had broken the rule and thus set a new rule, I would shrug and continue drawing, curious to see how the drawing was going ...

  Pen and highlighter on paper - 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" This drawing started out as an unruly grid of dots and emerged as a continuous knotted line with a spiral pattern drawing us into the dark inner reaches of the doorway. 

  Graphite, pencil crayon and soft pastel on paper - 9" x 12" Neighbour cat does not know if I am friend or foe. She is crouching to make herself small, but also bunching her muscles ready to make a leap, if necessary.