See for yourself: Drawing (out) the interiors of vision1

Drawing can apprehend and articulate from unexpected edges of the visual field/perceptual world – even as the draughtsman seeks to record ostensibly straightforward observation. Drawing is a sleight-of-hand that registers and interprets through layers of vision – by shifting regard between what is perceived and what is imagined, between the percept and the image. In ordinary perception, the disposition of sight is oriented towards expectation, in a visual regime that reinforces what meets the eye (rather than the ‘I’). Yet the view towards drawing allows for reception of other data: perception that un-enforces to expand or distil apprehension, to allow us to see more, or less, than what meets the eye. Even the established techniques that inform the western traditions of drawing – as an acquired expressive skill – coalesce around specified rules that direct us to alter the pose and project of vision; isolating our look to contour, value, negative spaces and so on. From such discrete and reconfigured repositions in seeing, ‘honest’ representations of observation may become recognized and recorded. But what constitutes a measurement of such honesty of sight? Too often, the strategies of looking for drawing are applied to merely achieve mimicry of expectations of perception. If limited thus, we neglect to ‘see’ how drawing can open onto intervals at the peripheries of vision, onto dormant agents of perception: the subtleties of reflection, the borders of sleep and dreams, the auras and occlusions that flicker across our gaze and our imagination everyday. An observant artist cultivates the ability to withhold aspects of cognition and recognition from perception and – through drawing – purposely and purposefully cultivates a capacity to withhold conclusion based upon preconception. By tracking and recording glimpses into the ephemeral, drawing discloses a fuller account of embodied life.