“Likeness can be obtained by shapes without spirit; but when truth is reached, spirit and substance are both fully expressed. He who tries to express spirit through ornamental beauty will make dead things.”[1]

“Fluid” drawings, my latest body of work within Dodalism,[2] are poetic, stream-of-consciousness collections of bits and pieces that make up perceivable reality. The bits are thoughts, sounds, sights, smells, and feelings that  inspired my compositions of droplet-like shapes, which I drew  with pencil and wax crayon. “Fluid” works are observations of the chaos of existence, a fluid mass of individual parts, always changing and moving, as filtered through a human mind.

I chose places that I knew or thought to be very stimulating and conducive to drawing for a sustained period. Trusting my instincts, I completed my initial line work and some of the colouring in one sitting at each location.

The composition is an abstraction and symbiosis of mind and environment. It developed organically within a circle, which I established with the use of wax crayon by vigorously tracing a stencil in any of the three sizes with which I chose to work.  The circle served as a playful containment field within which I drew my observations at every location. The circular format originated from a persistent method in my Dodalism drawing, where I rotate the page as a way of amassing various points of view. The work is intended to rotate very slowly, to simulate the ongoing change of what we perceive, using a mechanism which is currently being developed.

The drawings were finished at the studio where I used colour to define the individual symbols and shapes. The shapes reference droplets of water as a metaphor for portraying reality as a fluid mass. Finished, the drawings present the coded experience of my being at each of the locations for the viewer to interpret.

“Fluid” drawings express my feeling that it is the mind which gives structure and purpose to the universe, and it is our perception which isolates and segregates aspects of reality. The drawings challenge this notion of physical separation between objects and forces. They present all the things that the human mind perceives and those of which it is unaware, as a unified whole.  I hope to instill in viewers a sense of wonder and curiosity as they try to decipher the images, a quality that they could then reapply to their perception of the world that penetrates and surrounds us.

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[1] The Chinese on the Art of Painting,  translation and  comments by Osvald Siren and  Henri Vetch (Peiping, 1936),  passage from a treatise, Notes on Brushwork, by master Ching-Hao,  in The  World of Zen:   An  East–West  Anthology,  compiled,  edited, and with an introduction by Nancy Wilson Ross (New York: Vintage Books,  1960),  p. 91.

[2] Do:   from the need to do, to express, to create, to play, learn, and explore. Da:  to do it consciously, with a lighthearted approach,  curiosity, and a sense of wonder. Lism:  to create from the essence/spirit of a person, a softened “ism.”

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