Practice-infused drawing research: ‘Being present’ and ‘making present’

How can we understand the pivotal value of touch and collaborative processes within two artists’ drawing practice and how do we articulate the generative nature of such practice-based research? Duncan Bullen’s drawing explores the relationship between hand, breath and surface, Jane Fox’s, the semi-resisted action of wind between paper and pencil. Both artists have a shared concern with non-representational drawing processes, an expanded notion of ‘material’ and a focus on the experience of reciprocity between the individual practitioner and the world in which they practice. These concerns are discussed in terms of ‘being present’ and ‘making present’, which this article attempts to conceptualize at an interim stage in the research with reference to theory about drawing, anthropology and meditation practice. The understanding of drawing mobilized here is one in which, as Jane Grisewood argues, ‘seeing’ is not a prerequisite. It is a practice of drawing that is about receiving and being. Lyon, Bullen and Fox are developing a collaborative methodology for this research in which their respective embodied, manual practices of drawing and writing are in dialogue.