visual and the verbal

Description

Duncan Bullen, Drawing as Mindfulness

This paper is an account of my practice as drawer-as-meditator-as-researcher. In recent years drawing has become a preoccupation which has developed simultaneously to the practice of mindfulness mediation. The emphasis throughout is on practice; of doing something through a way of making that has the aim of cultivating a way of seeing/being that has a contemplative quality. Dwelling - a term borrowed from Dean Hughes - seems appropriate to the schema in which this practice takes place. A practice which, throughrepetition and stasis, imposes restriction and limitationand dwells within a fixed parameter. I intend to discuss three sets of recent drawings, 120 Colour Pencil Ruler Drawings, Greyscales, and Circus Street and place them in a context of paradoxical thinking around somethingand nothing, and knowing and not knowing, and the issues that arise from attempts of verbalizing the visual.Here, I propose an anti-teleological position, where the focus is on the activity of making and the material syntax of the work, in which the aim is not so much to bring something out or to express, yet, nevertheless recognizes that through making you shape your being, you shape the world, not just the object being made. Articulating and framing my practice in such a way, allows for continuous becoming, a way of embracing interconnectedness that proposes art to be a transformational activity.

Period	17 Jun 2015
Event title	the Visual and the Verbal
Event type	Conference
Location	Brighton, United KingdomShow on map