Drawing and the City

Ahmet Doğu İpek’s intense drawings have very strong ties with the city of Istanbul where he works.  These large scale drawings are made with graphite and watercolour and reflect what it can feel like when living in a city that is constantly being built around you. The last time I was in Istanbul parts of the city really felt like this. You could move from the deep gloomy dark magic of the Basilica Cistern and come out into the light of day only to be surrounded by the noise of constant building, building that never seemed to finish, lots of new buildings appearing to be left half finished as new ones began to be constructed in their footprint. 

This is one of the columns that you can see in the cisterns below Istanbul. If you look at the ceiling structure you can see how it might have influenced Ipek's drawings.

Ahmet Doğu İpek

Ahmet Doğu İpek at work

Jeanette Barnes is another example of an artist that uses her native city as  source material. London is seen as a city in constant change, she celebrates the hustle and bustle of its surging population and ever changing skyline. In contrast to Ipek who you feel sees the city as a necropolis, she sees it as a fountain of life. 

Jeanette Barnes at work.

Barnes works in charcoal, using a rubber to create an energetic surface mark quality, as well as allowing her to constantly adjust her drawings in relation to the unfolding spatial matrix she is creating. What both artists have in common is the scale they work on. When you see the actual drawings you can immerse yourself in them and this is an essential part of their quality. 

My own particular hero of city drawing is the architectural draftsman Hugh Ferriss.

Hugh Ferris

 His 1922 charcoal sketches of imaginary Manhattan skyscrapers. sketched out the implications of the new 'setback'  laws, which were brought in to ensure that light would still penetrate down to street level.  His images became iconic and still have a direct influence on my own drawings. 

You can see the original of this drawing of mine in the current LCA gallery exhibition 

See also earlier Images of the City posts part 1 and 2