Dodalism (Doo-da-lism, root word: doodle): to do, express, create, play, learn, and explore consciously and with a sense of wonder from one’s essence / spirit. It is a creative approach akin to playing, using scribbling or a seemingly chaotic approach to expression. Inspiration emerges from the moment at hand and responds to awareness of the internal and external environment, which gives the work a poetic quality.

Taking account of Zen teachings such as “no mind” and other creative approaches like stream of consciousness and free forming, Dodalism channels creativity into a physical manifestation by focusing on the action of “doing.” The idea shapes itself organically, with each action influencing the next action.

Initially I conceived of Dodalism as a purely abstract aspect of creating. The Infernal Machine drawing, one of my early pen scribbles, was used as a way of mapping and recoding thought. I was curious to see what kind of patterns, if any, would emerge from the attempt of separating my ego from the creative output? The non-specific approach created a space where ideas came and went, producing a rich mosaic of miscellaneous possibilities.

With each new piece, Dodalism progressed to encompass representational elements as the works became narratives and recordings of impressions that gathered during my moment of creating. Perceptions were noted and fed back into the creative loop, in turn influencing further action. I came to focus or channel the “chaotic scribble” within conceptual boundaries, thereby preserving the liveliness of the original scribble drawing while refining the presentation of its underlying ideas.

I have applied this creative approach to drawing, painting, installation, performance, writing, and research, fulfilling the original goal of Dodalism — to tap into and maintain a creative flow.

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In the beginning there was nothing, not even this… from Sio on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

“In the beginning there was nothing, not even this…” is a live Dodalism painting performance series in its third installment: “Once you start…continue”. The series focus is on the action of creating through free forming and stream of consciousness expression in a public setting. This time lapse was shot at the Toronto Richview Library as part of 2011 Culture Days in Canada over a five hour period.

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“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.

[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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In the “Pre-Fluid” period the focus was on the use of color and mixed media. There was a need to simplify the process of drawing which usually tended to be a dense composition of abstracted elements scribbled with a ballpoint pen. Secondly the possibility of using a narrative as a way to guide the creation of the drawing was an exciting and new direction in Dodalism.

The first drawing “Clusterfucked universe” was guided by the theme of a chaotic universe with exploding supernovas and planets laid out in a somewhat geometrical pattern. Using crayons was fun as large areas got filled with scribbles of colour, an interesting continuation of a method exclusively executed with pens up to this point. The marks themselves were direct references to the story that was unfolding as it was being drawn. One moment a planet would be distinguished by a scribble of colour and the next moment a scribble of a supernova explosion would cover the planet up. The drawing was finalized by bumping up the chroma with acrylic paints which led to some great optical mixing and glazing effects solidifying the decision to further explore the mixed media possibilities.

The Wakan Tanka drawings are a tribute to Canadian Native art styles which I really enjoy. The fluidity of line, colour and textures used on a verity of surfaces imbedded with mythologies and stories are all things which I chose to reflect through this theme. I came across the persona of Wakan Tanka while doing research for an illustration I was working on for a band “Tonka & Puma”. Months later when the British Petroleum oil spill happened in 2010 I decided to respond by creating a large drawing which drew most of its narrative from a story by Carl Safina about a dolphin that was drowning having filled its lungs with oil. Adopting the Dodalism approach I started by creating a border out of random shapes which are associated with the four elements: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. The images within the boarder are symbolic elements representing the story as well as some of my personal comments on the human condition. A booklet was later made with images and writing related to the drawing which was distributed in a limited run around Toronto Ottawa and Montreal.  Wakan Tanka and the orgy of life was a fun project used to further explore narrative possibilities and the use of mixed media. The shapes which originally were symbolic of the four elements were now treated as though each had its own personality something I also explored through an evolving series “Germs”.

The idea of shapes with individual personalities was applied in the next project “Good Things”. The crayons were used to establish a sort of a containment field with energetic curved lines tracing out a circle within a circle frame. The shapes within the containment field are an interpretation of a liquid swirling inside a jar. Having completed the commission I had a clear idea where I wanted to concentrate my energy for the next body of work which would be the “Fluid” series.

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Dodalism Painting

Painting opens up a range of new possibilities for Dodalism. Do to the ability to construct images faster than with any drawing medium it is my usual choice when performing Dodalism in public. The variety of painting techniques available like texturing, blending, impasto, glazing etc., are efficient ways of adding dimension to the work that is not available in drawing even though the approach to mark making is still largely informed by it. Images are built up by overlapping brush strokes which mimic drawing with a pen or crayon. Clusters of symbolic and abstract shapes fill the canvass with colour and paint texture adding to the dimension of the work.

The first Dodalism paintings were almost entirely line driven with little consideration for any other painting method. They were also my first works in Dodalism to break the monochromatic rhythm set up by work accomplished with ballpoint pens.

In 2009 I experimented with creating highly textural surfaces loosely referencing abstract painting styles of Jackson Pollock and Gerhard Richter. The textures are built up with thick coats of gesso and acrylic paints which I later enhance with brush or pen Dodalism.

At the end of 2011 I began experimenting with painting using glazing which allows the image to build up slowly with a lot of interactions between each layer of colour. Each layer of paint informs the next building up to create texture, shading and symbolic likeness.

It is still a developing idea which I am interested in seeing evolve which each painting. Staying true to the core philosophy I approach each new painting from a fresh perspective seeing what is happening as I am performing the action of painting. The works are still very much line driven creating a sort of hieroglyphic narrative which is something I am interested in developing further. The idea of Dodalism as a form of coding which is balancing visual coding with that of text is my current concern.

Currently I have an ongoing painting project under the title of “In the beginning there was nothing, not even this…” which charts the progression from one paining to the next of how the language of Dodalism paining is evolving.

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During the 2007 Venice Biannually while street vending with “Cut-outs”, a series of mixed-media works made for the trip, I was sharing the pavement with a group of vendors who were selling bootleg products such as Gucci bags. One particular late afternoon, a vendor tired from the day’s hustle settled on a bench not far away from my vending spot. Mean while his companions, a group which varied between five to twenty men roaming from spot to spot on a turn of a dime, were discussing something. Sitting on the Venetian pavement in front of my vending setup I pulled out my sketchbook and began to draw his portrait thinking about modern nomadic peoples following not herd movements but opportunity.

The Dodalism process of engaged awareness and stream of consciousness expression was applied to the drawing.  Setting out to limit the composition to only a few elements, my chaotic scribbles which usually spread from edge to edge of a page were confined within the portrait and few symbolic elements.  As the drawing progressed, my internal thoughts were summed up in a Haiku like poem. Finished the Dodalism drawing remained focused, distilling the loop between the artists’ thought process and perception of the environment into a visual statement. The following drawings in the series experiment with a similar approach, focusing the Dodalism drawing on a specific idea with the intent on representation. The exception is the “god” drawing which was produced during a night long conversation with the women I was staying with in Venice. During that time a lot of things were going through my mind which never got distilled into a Haiku like poem.

“Faces” refines Dodalism by setting out a boundary concentrating the expression within a given context which in this case gravitates towards ideas around people and their place within the economy. The drawings centre on real people I would come across in my time in Venice and back in Toronto.

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The “Black and Blue” drawing is an attempt to capture as many impressions of the ‘now’ as possible by drawing with a ballpoint pen. It is a follow up to “The Infernal Machine” drawing and a milestone in a creative approach I have began to refer to as Dodalism.

“Black and Blue” evolved organically, at different time intervals and with different emphasis on subject matter, collecting images and impressions from my day to day living.  By working with randomly changing variables “Black & Blue” explores the idea that all things are interconnected, contributing to a greater whole.

The layout of the panels in “Black and Blue” is inspired by the swastika as it relates to the ancient symbol for flow, eternity and luck. The symbolism of flow extends to Dodalism as a means or an approach to harnessing and recording of thoughts and ideas as they pour into awareness, then out onto the page and then back into awareness. This creates a loop which propels creativity generating images and ideas faster than they could be recorded. The images spread from the centre flowing left from one panel to the next creating a loop which could be said relates to eternity. Luck or the chaotic variable plays a key role in the shaping of the artwork through a seemingly random and perpetual scribble. The structure of the drawing also subverts the modern appropriation of the swastika by the Nazi regime and presents an ancient symbol in new and unexpected way, creating new perspectives and avenues for understanding.  This reflects my ongoing experimentation with communicating ideas through art and my fascination how they are received and understood.

“Black and Blue” engages in a creative perpetual flux where new ideas and perspectives manifest themselves through engaged awareness.  Having no constraints as to what it was to become the drawing created a total creative space akin to playing, motivating me to continue developing my artistic practice in a time which was ripe with doubt and apprehension. It is as much a biographical record of events in my life as it is an abstraction of the dynamic forces and influences that continually shape our lives. The incorporation of the swastika reflects the influence eastern philosophy has on my artistic practice & philosophy.

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Traveling Moments continues the exploration of composition through a stream of consciousness doodle. The images are built during a period of travel or an outing. The goal was to build a composition with elements directly influenced by the environment and people in it.

The drawings act like a visual diary made up of representational and symbolic images and writing. The non-linear approach clusters separate moments in time which blend into one impression. There is no focal point in the drawings which reflecting the exploration of the notion of becoming in Dodalism work.

Travailing Moments advance Dodalism language available in the construct of stream of consciousness compositions directly inspired by the environment by making use of figure and portrait in a way unrivaled in previous bodies of work. The shapes become something through harnessing the energy present in the scribbled marks.

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“Harlem Jazz” drawings explore the direct connection between music and drawing. Over the course of a few visits to St. Nicks in Harlem, New York I had the opportunity to submerge in a live Jazz performance that would last up to six hours with only a break or two in-between.

The drawings capture a transient state that Jazz so well expresses. Pulsating, Jazz shapes as it progresses forward morphing intuitively to suit the shape of the mood the musician is in. This quality is captured by the quality of lines which depicts portraits of the musicians who appear to be dissolving into their environment through sound.

In “Four hour set”, “Bob Cunningham playing the base” and “Marjorie Eliot playing the piano” the line work attempts to follow music as it fills the space with sound. In turn a dynamic design and portrait formed.

“Harlem Jazz” marks a departure in Dodalism from a cluster approach to recording and in turn attempts to harness the energy and focuses it into a specific idea, in this case portrait.

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“Snapshots” was developed as the first official Dodalism body of work.  The goal was to engage in a stream of consciousness doodle which would tread the line between the external events and internal thoughts.

The drawings center on a recognizable feature of the environment and evolve around it, with the exception of “Untitled” the last piece in the series. The locations are a reflection of my curiosity directed at creating in public places. Some reflect my usual hangouts, like “Kensington” market while others I sought out of an interest in seeing what would happen if I drew there.

“Subte is in my coffee” is the best example of internal ideas connecting to a live location. At the time I was reading a collection of writings by Subcomandate Marcos, leader of the Zapatista movement in southern Chiapas, Mexico. The ideas of this first postmodern revolution, his poetry and essays struck a deep cord with me. When I was starting to draw in a coffee shop I noticed a bag of coffee that was from Mexico and things took off from there creating a loose narrative of images that somehow related to what I knew and was moved by in the Zapatista movement.

“Snapshots” drawings unlike their predecessors are constructed out of symbolic elements.  The drawings experiment with the possibility of a narrative within a stream of consciousness construct and incorporate text as a visual component of the work. The graphic exploration of thought and perception in “Snapshots” renders the external environment and the internal response to it.

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