Along the line

Embarking on a work of art constitutes a reduction of information – because we grasp the diversity and plurality of the manifestations we encounter by abstracting them and transforming them into manageable concepts; as we do when we draw contour lines on the landscape – they are imaginary and invisible but an abstraction essential for noting a difference or marking a place on a map. In the same way, a stroke in a sketch or a line in the sand is a manifestation of our ability to draw a boundary that both includes and excludes information. Where the line makes the birth of an idea visible, it expresses through movement our tendency to mark a difference by drawing attention to and enclosing a whole series of relations that confront our preconceived notions. It is in the process of transformation in which we reduce the complexity of how we work, and rethink our ideas anew by refining the very same reduction into an assertion, that we can retain the heterogeneity of material though the process of abstraction. We are comfortable with this relationship, we understand it; it is such a compelling process that when we draw, we become absorbed by the simplicity of the event.