It is hard to think of any other activity that forces you to merge your inward and outward vision in the way that drawing does. This is particularly true of Reportage drawing and it’s greatest conceit is that it is a record of pure observation. What it really is is a record of thought, synthesis, presumption, judgment and looking. It is an act that requires the artist to participate in a dialogue about what is worth drawing and, importantly, why should we care? This is is the job of the artist. To make us care. To draw us in to a particular vision of the world that challenges us to think about the circumstances of others. The nature of the struggle to live and keep your head above water. This granularity is so perfectly captured in the rough marks of a drawing that the whisper or shout of humanity is ever present (even in less confident drawings). Enjoy!
Whispers and Shouts
15 JunMining the pavement
20 MarThese drawings are from my commute, Portsmouth and London. This collection of people were spotted in ordinary locations and playing out the routine of ordinary life. What they reveal is the remarkable theatre of the everyday that sees individuals and groups engaged in small and large dramas which inevitably, when drawn, have a distilled, symbolic weight. Out on the street we are always going somewhere else. I am mining the pavement to see if those transitory moments represent a kind of destination unto themselves. Perhaps drawing of this kind is a meditation on our time alone. Our time disconnected from origins and destinations where we confront our own thoughts among others similarly caught in transitory states. Enjoy!
New Work
10 MarHere are some new etchings. From a personal piece about true intentions called ‘dogs under the table’, to an illustration inspired by Bulgakov’s ‘Heart of a Dog’, and finally, a sugar lift experiment channeling film noir.
Enjoy! To see more please visit my website at www.louisnetter.com
Walthamstow
23 FebThese drawings were done on a single day in Walthamstow Market in London. It is a very different place from 1997 when I lived there. The market was fairly deserted and store fronts seemed tired and dated. It was a difficult place to draw and not draw attention. I ducked into many side alleys and roads to draw on my knee on bike stands and front porches. Often when worried about being noticed I was met with total indifference and other times, when seemingly shrouded from view, I had quiet observers appear and startle me. It would seem that drawing is for some such a foreign activity that is neither suspicious or provocative. Young kids are particularly uninterested, seeing what I am doing as either archaic or incomprehensible. I do wonder how people in general are engaging with the tangible realities of a shared planet of people when their heads are stuck in a digitally mediated world. Drawing brings such an intimacy to experience that it inevitably connects one to the day to day realities of the people around us. Long may we look up and not just down at the world around us.
More random acts of drawing
27 JanHere are several drawings from a variety of locations. The drawings done in the natural history museum in London were done completely from direct observation and not from memory. This was an exciting challenge around unpredictable school kids and rubber necking tourists. I was happy to see I wasn’t the only person drawing in there. In fact, it seemed a popular activity. Not surprising considering the beauty of the building and the rich diversity of compliant subjects that don’t move! The more I consider my practice the more I realise that drawing is profoundly rewarding in so many ways. In no other act do we experience, in tangible ways, our struggle with understanding our perceptual reality and, how flexibly we can bend it to our purposes. Enjoy!
Drawing in Polska
3 Oct
These drawing are from a recent trip to Poland to attend a conference on word and image at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz. I was presenting a paper about the experience of creating my graphic novel and how it posed some interesting questions about the dynamic relationship between text and image and how the narrative of the text takes on new dimensions through the medium of the comic. Some of the work from the graphic novel can be seen here…
To my eyes, Bydgoszcz was a friendly and beautiful city. I hope one can sense the warmth in these drawings through the clearly satirical bent, as there was full respect for the complex social, political and cultural landscape of the Poles. I got caught a few times, most notably by an old woman who sat next to me after I had quickly turned the page of a drawing I had just started of her. She sat next to me and rather unnervingly stared as I drew, giving audible bursts of approval. Needless to say I needed to find a new perch from which to draw.
Reportage drawing is the central focus of my Mphil/PhD study at the Royal College of Art and Design. I am looking at how the act reveals intuitive visual language and speaks to the multiple layers of both perception and commentary on the social, political and cultural conditions of the subjects themselves. I am also bringing in other reportage practitioners to contribute to a greater understanding of this highly challenging and revelatory act.
Enjoy Polska!
The Sensual Act
19 Sep
Here are some drawings done in London and St. Ives on holiday. We had some stunning weather and the beach was gorgeous. The seals were incredibly beautiful and for massive animals, moved with such grace underwater. The drawings reflect my interest in the exuberant moment. An ecstatic expression that while contained in lines and marks, extends our perception of the moment. Drawings capture moments but they also capture ideas. The drawings are prompted after all by an idea of something. Whether that is a formal interest in shape or tone or a commentary, it imprints the drawing with a purpose and a communal attachment to the circumstance of its making. What I like about drawing is that the thinking, feeling and making are unified into a singular, resonant image. It is difficult to strip out the humanity in a drawing and the echo of sensual experience in the act. We might own the drawing and control the circumstances of its making but we don’t own the experience of seeing the drawing. That is a delight all our own.
Random acts
7 AugThese are some drawings done in Portsmouth and Oudon in France. Time and circumstance puts much distance between these images so a collective theme is not worth identifying. There is a an exploration of real and social/political space mapped out in these drawings. I don’t believe in the necessity of the artist to justify the work that is created. I contend it is much more interesting giving the drawings ones own ‘reading’ and that the value of the work is in how it connects to your own experience (and perhaps prejudices). This communion with experience is also a connection with a place and circumstance that we may or may not have a tangible connection to. A drawing is an inevitable judgment, a series of decisions set in motion by some impetus whether it be a person, a place or an event. Looking at a drawing such as these reportage drawings, we are invited to see what the artist was thinking at that specific moment. That moment is no longer temporal as the drawing is fixed and we can closely read and discover the matrix of marks that, with united focus, say ‘look what I saw’.
Polska part II
3 OctTags: drawing, louis netter, reportage drawing, satire, social commentary