Drawing is seeing and exploring.  Whether you are drawing from life or from your imagination and the realm of pure creativity, it’s all about seeing.

                                            Lisa Dawn Gold

         Drawing at it’s fundamental core, is mark making.  It is the interaction of materials set or thrust into motion by impulse or intention.  It is the residue left behind from the action.  Or as one New York dealer once offered, “the evidence of the process”.

     A drawing is really a compilation of various types of marks.  All the marks are abstract in nature even if the end result is a realistic representation.   Drawing can be the first physical manifestation of an idea, it is the first step towards making a thing real even if imagined.  There is a power in making something real, bringing something to fruition.

     There are different reasons for a drawing coming into existence.  There may be the need to document or illustrate and idea.    There may be an exploratory drawing to view several options for an idea.  A drawing may exist purely for itself as a work of art.  A drawing like the spoken word may be done by the same person many ways - quick, impulsive primitive, elementary fashion or in the most accomplished academic way.  In any event, drawing from the days of cavemen were and still remain one of the most immediate and direct artistic impulses.  Drawing is an expression of visual communication and documentation.  It is a place to start or end and holds enough interest and possibility for many lifetimes of exploration.  I may only have begun to scratch the surface.

     I have always come back to drawing as a point of focus and had a deep appreciation for it.  It is the most intimate barometer of who an artist is.  It is a clear window into the temperament, thinking and hand of an artist, it is their touch.  By viewing many great artist drawings over time, I have always felt as though I had come to know them.  Often their drawings are the truest and most direct of actions.  Many artist when they make their other works get caught up in ideas of what works should be like and may loose some of what is most intrinsically “them” or direct.  Who they really are may get lost in the making of these other works.  It is really by being in touch with who we are that we may be able to contribute to the dialogue of the history of art in a unique way.

      After my early art training and becoming a bit of a accomplished draftsman, with the interest in freeing oneself , I explored the realm of what became my drawing machines.  It was my interest to see what we saw rather than show what I already knew.  It was immediately clear to me from the beginning that the drawings from the drawing machines had an exquisite beauty and a great sense of freedom. They were pure and elevated for inspection in that minimal esthetic kind of way.

     My early drawing machines focused on this inspection and range of mark making and also  explored the very idea of mark making.  I became fascinated by what mark each machine would make.  Each movement and action produced a certain type of mark.  The exploration of the drawing machines and their marks were a kind of breakdown, dissection and study of the very nature of drawing.  Drawing and each mark became intimately connected or correlated to time.  The complexity or darkness of each drawing was easily seen in association with the time it took to make. 

     After several years of making numerous drawing machines, with the discovery of cast graphite, I culminated the mechanical works with a large piece called the “Art Time Clock” .  The intent was to put all the marks back together again as though a giant moving drawing in a mechanical fashion.  I put all the drawings from each machine in custom made geared frames and had them all turn together powered by a small electric motor.   It was the reassembly after the multi year intricate dissection.

     In retrospect, if I had three life times I could not ever completely explore all the possibilities of mark making and ways to make marks or drawings.

        With such a heightened sense of mark making it was inevitable that I discovered my Undercover or Incognito Drawings.  Art that was found in the place of where action took place.  There was my private little drawing on the wall where my phone sat near my loft bed.  The antenna from the cordless phone had continually over time scratched the wall when returned to it’s base.  That Incognito drawing was simply titled, “Many Calls”. 

     More recently, I discovered my  “Chop Wood in the house drawings”.  There is a very solid rock near a wood stove.  It is perfect for taking heavy blows needed to further split wood without any effect other than an occasional mark to the wall.  There are the water splash drawings that last momentarily and then evaporates on venetian stucco beyond the bathroom sink.  Somehow these natural found drawings have less pomp and circumstance than any artwork created for the intention to be a work of art.  They come when least expected, they only make the mark needed from the action.  These drawings are economical in that respect and always seems to exhibit that certain natural beauty found in freedom.  They typically contain the force or energy of the act.  These incognito drawings have come into existence for a reason.  Even if they had no intention to parade as art, they exist in the end just the same, for pure visual pleasure.  These drawings can still be appreciated the same as any drawing by Michelangelo.