manifest international drawing annual 2007 exhibition-in-print
online resource





Kelly Wallace
London, Ontario




519.679.7614
kelly@terminalarts.com

terminalarts.com


page 122




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statement

Drawing is terminal. A line that travels destined to be painted over, become architecture, music or sculpture. Inherent to drawing is the departure riddled with fear of commiting, exposure, psychology and time. I think we are all afraid of drawing, in any way seriously. Drawing is like every other tool with one exception, the option to pursue a meticulous definition of the subject is infinite.


At this point in time my drawings are the compressions of 2500 hours of drawing per year for the past ten years without seeking commercial representation. My drawings represent relationships between what I see and the marks I make. I am in pursuit of what is memorable, not the perfect moment but what is unforgettable, unexpected both in the experience of drawing and viewing my drawing. I want to look at drawings that rival the magnitude of painting and the physical shape of sculpture.


I freehand a line drawing of what I see on a surface I see as lit. The pencil is a reflection or refraction of light, it can surround or shine through the subject. Drawing in cadence up to 200 vertical lines per minute I sculpt physical, topographical quantities of hard graphite discerning tone. I have been thinking of an electronic pencil. I want the military to lend me their human eye guided missle device, so I could wire a pencil to draw wherever my eye looks. I could track and edit the chronology of line. I have developed several approaches to drawing mechanically, all to reduce the amount of time it takes to render tone and maintain a sense of humor. My subject and my marks are grounded in the detail, they then fragment into a chronology of conceptual line exposing and unraveling the tone into frequencies of line. In my peripheries, I audio record the sound of the pencil, I make time-lapse films of drawing. I entertain the idea of the impossible image, only exsisting in two-dimensions. I draw negetive space, particularly in the reflection of light on the blackened graphite, dark becomes ethereal. I extend the drawing outside the tone, notations of what might of been rendered fully.


I research and make surfaces to draw on that are archival, formal and rigid. I draw on sculptures, an extension of the drawing allowing for complete control of the pencil. I construct these panels to support marble gesso sanded to a mirror-like consistency or hot press paper mounted and pressed to a uniform surface tension.
Fifty to two hundred hours in each drawing, is plenty of time to concentrate, edit, play and think. Drawing is forward I cannot go back. I find evidence in the drawing I have struggled with, technically or otherwise. I am molding my drawings into series. Formally working with the drawing as object and creating an image that could not exist if were it not drawn.

bio

born: 1968, London, Ontario


education

University of Guelph, BFA, 1993

selected publications

Artscape Magazine;October Cover Image, Review: Ontario, 2007

selected solo or two-person exhibits

The Art Exchange, London Ontario, 2007


 
 
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