The languages of drawing

Drawing switches between languages or operating modes in a similar way to verbal or written language. Sometimes when speaking we are simply affirming our existence, we chat or just hum to ourselves, when drawing we might doodle, make marks simply for pleasure, not unlike that basic pleasure we get when scratching ourselves. But then a language can get quite technical, descriptive or poetical. We can become rhetorical, emotive or begin to tell stories, each mode having its own language or effect and this is done so instinctively as we communicate verbally that we barely notice how we switch between one mode and another. We do the same when we write. At times we use an academic mode and then we become more informal as we send a short e mail. Drawing is similar; we have specialist modes when ‘speaking’ in art language, informal sketches, technical descriptions, geometric plans, abstract forms, mapping, records of gestures and narrative scenarios and they bleed and blur from one into another as we change focus and types of thinking.

Lying on the carpet in front of me I see a newspaper with its sensational headlines, a detective novel, a book on research as art practice, a scientific magazine and a text on crystal experiments, a half written shopping list and a child’s make-up kit with instructions. Texts are everywhere around us and they operate according to use and context. We normally don’t try and read the instructions as poetry or read the newspaper headlines as scientific fact. However a novelist might use all of these modes in order to explore the textual forms that reflect the complexity of human life and drawing can be similar. Several languages or modes of representation can operate at the same time, however like the novelist an artist when drawing will have to weave the different voices together and find formats for them to exist alongside each other in a way that feels ‘right’ or reflects the way we would normally blend different modes of communication together. You simply have to be aware of changing contexts, we expect this of a novelist, but perhaps we are not so used to this when reading drawings, but for an artist interested in visual narratives, these different visual languages and their interplay are the bread and butter of how meaning is made.

I'm working on a series of drawings of towers at the moment, the towers create links between different landscapes, some drop down and other fall from the sky, the languages of drawing also change and switch between the geometry of modernist buildings and the gestural mark of a perceptually seen landscape drawing. As these drawings are reasonably large, (about 7 feet high) and on good quality paper, I can also use ink washes to develop another 'voice' that can play off conceptions of what is soft and what should be hard. The aesthetic aim is to make all of these work together as an image that reads as one. 

Some of my other drawings use different conventions for instance the idea of a map is fused with ideas about a local area in this image below. 

This image is made from several small drawings done as I walked through the streets of Leeds, again the hard work is to try and make the image read as a whole. This is about 9 feet high. All of these larger drawings are also attempts to create visual allegories for how I see the world. They often begin as stories or poetry, see: link

See also other posts related directly to my artwork:

Garry Barker exhibition Workshop Press Gallery Ceramics and drawings

Immaterial disarray exhibition Sculpture and drawings

The evolution of an idea

When the past overhauls the present Includes link to 360 degree view of exhibition

Library interventions