I have realised that many of my recent drawings have become increasingly busy and full. I think that this has something to do with questioning what drawing actually IS. Some of my earlier pen and ink drawings along this theme, were based on the idea of what Jonah might have seen on the inside of the big fish which saved his life. In the book of Jonah his prayer in the belly of the fish was partly a description: ….”The great deep engulfed me, Weeds were wrapped around my head…. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever.” Jonah 2 vs. 5-6. My drawings on this theme were quite dark and tumultuous and claustrophobic, and many of my drawings are still going in that direction. When I draw a line (especially with a fine black pen), it becomes a hole in the page. A slit into another realm; but equally it become the edge of something else, something in the foreground, like the out-line that describes a cartoon character such as Mickey Mouse. Now of course things are not just black and white. i.e. the white of the paper, and the black of an ink ‘hole’, there are grey things too, which are perceived as ‘in-between’. The black ink which makes holes in the page has to describe those things too. One can’t always just make outlines of things to show them as big or small to describe their distance in space away from the viewer. One has to use black lines to describe things which are in shadow too. Working with black ink creates this conundrum. It’s like trying to slice a hair lengthways.
Walter Hayn