Drawing project statement.

My drawings are inspired by the places I see as I wander the streets of the city. Unlike a lot of people I look upwards as I walk and am driven by a never ending desire to see whats around the next corner and I see a real beauty in the mundane structures. I'm attracted to the buildings and how they come together to form the streets. Through my drawings I want the viewer be transported to where I stood and to see these scenes in the same way as I did.

I started with my book, 'Wander, Record', which is a document of these journey's and a response to what I see surrounding me and through these drawings I progressed to larger pieces.
Complicated alleyways become broken down simple abstraction studies and line drawings built from shapes and angles but devoid of unnecessary detail. My writings give a glimpse into the small things I notice as I watch the world in front of myself. I want the work to capture the ever growing state of the city, it's shape and structural content, and the project, like the city itself, has no signs of stopping.
I tend to draw quickly when I make the larger drawings and will often start another drawing straight after finishing one. My urge to continuously experiment with different styles and mediums has led me to use technical pens and an old ink pen dipped in Indian ink over watercolour washes on Fabriano paper and discarded materials recovered from the places I've visited. 

Drawing Project 2014

The picture house was a centre for photography in the centre of Leicester.
A busy little meeting place for photographers, designers and artists but unfortunately it was closed by the council due to them not wanting to cover the costs any more, like a lot of public buildings in the UK.
The grubby old building is now just another skeleton or monument of 'what was', it's completely derelict and with the usual signs sitting on the front; for sale, to let etc.
Through the windows you can sometimes see figures wandering around inside and the eery shine of flickering lights at night.
Leicester city centre is full of these types of buildings, wasting away and waiting to be converted into social housing for the mass of unemployed people living in the city centre.

'Picture House', Ink, watercolour on Fabriano paper, 120cm x 100cm, April 2014. 

Franz Radziwill.

The work Franz Radziwill makes is aimed at everything expressionism isn't and was given the name 'Magic Realism'.
A member of the Berlin Novembergruppe in the early 1900's with George Grosz and Otto Dix, who he shared a studio with, he created paintings of the places and buildings he saw.

     Franz Radziwill, 'The Strike', 1931.

His images and life were greatly affected by his involvement in two world wars and the fact he was banned from carrying out his works by the Nazi's during the war. Labelled one of the degenerate artists by Hitler, he was relieved of his post as professor at the Dusseldorf academy.
His works look at humans and the technology and development of the world in the same way Demuth's 'My Egypt' does, which was also painted in the 20's.
His paintings feature Industrial backdrops filled with planes, ships and very occasionally people and are mysterious in both composition and content.
He looks at whats going on in the world around him and mixes mythical happenings into the frame.
In the image above we see what looks like an everyday type of town scene. A road being worked on, smoke coming from the chimney of a house or bar and industrial works and blocks of flats but mixed with this we see a red blob in the sky where the sun should be, what looks like a black abandoned coffin in the road, and a single plane sits in the sky next to what appears to be a large black expanse resembling a bird bursting into flames. The structure of the bridge is also a mystery. it appears to be impassable to any vehicle and there are no people at all.
The pinks, blues, reds and other colours are bright and vivid, and the perfect detail is consistent throughout the whole image.
in this painting I think he's  mixing what he sees with what he's seen.
His town growing around him coupled with the memories of the scenes he witnessed in the wars.

A quick look at...Rik Smits...

I recently found some work by Holland born Rik Smits.
His intricately detailed drawings and foam built imaginary city models are intriguing, confusing and entertaining to see. Inspired by Paul Noble his pencil drawings show a contrast between religion and capitalism, capitalism seems to be winning, and most are works derived from his own imagination mixed with slashes of reality. They look sic-fi inspired, maybe a glimpse of the future when the earth is flooded due to climate change? This also raises the fact that the works look at the environment and whats going on in the world through the changes that are happening in the cities.
My own drawings of the city tend to lack people amongst the structures and Smits' work is the same. His scenes are also empty of human life.
Possibly, like myself, he's more interested in the structures and what they do on their own rather than the people and lives that fill the spaces in-between.
I'm more interested with how these buildings are shaped and connected, their structural beauty and the symmetry aspect of the city rather than the people living in them.
Looking at his collection of images I think Smits has the same view as myself;
We grow, we build, we multiply, but the space doesn't.

Drawing Project 2014...

untitled, 

Pen and ink drawing and watercolour on Fabriano paper, 144cm x 85cm, March 2014. 

This drawing was made after a wander through an estate I'd never seen before. Most of the flats were occupied and the smaller blocks are starting to crumble and I tried to draw this into the image with rough edges and splatters of ink. 

Considering how full up these places are  what really stood out was how quiet it was. Every now and again a dog would bark at one end and this set off all the other dogs in the area. The only other noises were the distant high pitched screeches of ambulances and police cars in the city. 

Drawing Project 2014...

This drawing is part of my main drawing project for 2014.
It's built from a selection of images collected on a wander and is another view of the structures on the outskirts of Leicester city.
I find my inspiration in wandering and looking, losing my way in streets and estates I've never seen before.
To me these places are an endless supply of subjects to work from.

'E-State'

Watercolour, pen and ink drawing on Fabriano paper, 75cm x 75cm March 2014, 

Drawing Project...City Colours...

This piece is part of my main drawing project for 2014 and looks at the colours of the various buildings dotted around the city. On a wander I chose buildings that had a specific look but more importantly the colours they are painted in which stood out against the rest of the grey skyline.
It's drawn onto acetate, as architectural drawings sometimes are and then mounted onto a recovered piece of wood from a building site in Leicester City Centre.  The skyline in Leicester changes all the time and every old building is being snatched up and remade into flats and apartments, mainly for students. The good thing is a lot of the buildings are restored in a way that keeps the original features rather than removing them so the old look remains amongst the new structures.
I wanted the detailed precise structural drawing to stand out against the dirty, rough surface of the wood  and the use of acetate gives it a third dimension and as you move across the front of the piece you see things reflected in it, filling the spaces between the structures.

    'Panoramic 1', Wooden panel, acetate, pen and acrylic, 30cm x 90cm, March 2014.

                      Detail of 'Panoramic 1'.