THE SPEEDING SUBJECT
watercolours:
oil paintings:
Life Art
In the year 2000 I discovered something new as a result of a trip on a motorcycle: a method of allowing speed to determine what and how I draw and paint. By drawing while in motion I discovered that my drawings function as “memory aids.” They are triggers to the mind, and they release the piled-up sensations experienced over the time period of their making. As I work with them there is a release of information; all the sensations return to my consciousness that impinged upon it while I first made the drawing. For a limited period of time: 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes, a “stream of events” flows upon the sensory apparatus of my body and is somehow kept in my memory to be released by the visual record I made during the experience. The flow would not occur without the necessity to make the record. One causes the other.
Delight and Fright
I like to speed, to be physically on the edge. And I know that speed is an interruption. It cannot go on. There is limited time. It must stop, otherwise it would not be speed - speed is relative. This knowledge about the nature of speed, that the delight MUST end, produces a certain degree of stress, productive stress. It is my thesis that the brain is receptive to a “stream of sensations” when under this stress and that it is one of two critical necessities for memory capture. There is a feeling of urgency: the DELIGHT of speed will stop and so will the stimulus for the drawing. Will I have recorded this event, the only time that this particular experience will be mine? Am I equal to it? So with the delight in speed comes the tension, the urgency, the fright.
Blank-Slate-State of Mind
The other critical necessity to this method is a feeling of openness, receptivity, even passivity, to what might come, a “blank-slate-ness.” The subject must treat the speeding experience as removed from normal life, as an experiment in recording via the body. The body becomes a conveyancer of a stream from all its senses, of smells, sounds, vibrations, air quality, temperature, pressure. By using the passive “acted-upon” psychology, I aim to find out what it is to allow sensory experience to pile up in my body quickly, urgently, simultaneously, so that I hold the enormous tension of conveying this flood of intense experience, this stream of sensory events.
The Rule
The visual language I use to convey this flood of intense sensory events must obey one rule: it must be true to the original “scribble-drawing”, the “aide-memoire” that triggers the memory. Arbitrariness is unbidden and deadly. Drawing the line again makes the entire process an anologue to the experience, and to live, it must have this character. All the sensations of that momentary event live again as I find marks, layers, dots, hatches, smacks, strings, spills, patches and all hues that can be true to the experience they relive. Graphite and photocopy toner redraw the lines, thick, dark, spiky, slow areas of stickiness move into swift curving lines, rubber tire squeal of the speeding vehicle. Single and double meanders, loops, spirals, whorls, single and doubled figure eights horse around within the square picture plane, square because it holds a whole constellation of sensations, an idea in time, rather than trying to represent a scene. Fast, wet, drippy washes of paint overlay graphite and toner, creating smudges in the dark, like blue smoke exhaust or perfume from milkweed. Surfaces smooth and glossy and forward assert themselves over calm matte volumes of recession. Edges of thick calligraphic paint squiggles catch light and play the surface like a dance. Certain areas within the square format are heavily worked, while others, lying ahead or behind, are left blank as canvas or plywood.
The Speeding Subject
©Mary Joyce
In the year 2000 I discovered something new as a result of a trip on a motorcycle: a method of allowing speed to determine what and how I draw and paint. By drawing while in motion I discovered that my drawings function as “memory aids.” They are triggers to the mind, and they release the piled-up sensations experienced over the time period of their making. As I work with them there is a release of information; all the sensations return to my consciousness that impinged upon it while I first made the drawing. For a limited period of time: 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes, a “stream of events” flows upon the sensory apparatus of my body and is somehow kept in my memory to be released by the visual record I made during the experience. The flow would not occur without the necessity to make the record. One causes the other.
Delight and Fright
I like to speed, to be physically on the edge. And I know that speed is an interruption. It cannot go on. There is limited time. It must stop, otherwise it would not be speed - speed is relative. This knowledge about the nature of speed, that the delight MUST end, produces a certain degree of stress, productive stress. It is my thesis that the brain is receptive to a “stream of sensations” when under this stress and that it is one of two critical necessities for memory capture. There is a feeling of urgency: the DELIGHT of speed will stop and so will the stimulus for the drawing. Will I have recorded this event, the only time that this particular experience will be mine? Am I equal to it? So with the delight in speed comes the tension, the urgency, the fright.
Blank-Slate-State of Mind
The other critical necessity to this method is a feeling of openness, receptivity, even passivity, to what might come, a “blank-slate-ness.” The subject must treat the speeding experience as removed from normal life, as an experiment in recording via the body. The body becomes a conveyancer of a stream from all its senses, of smells, sounds, vibrations, air quality, temperature, pressure. By using the passive “acted-upon” psychology, I aim to find out what it is to allow sensory experience to pile up in my body quickly, urgently, simultaneously, so that I hold the enormous tension of conveying this flood of intense experience, this stream of sensory events.
The Rule
The visual language I use to convey this flood of intense sensory events must obey one rule: it must be true to the original “scribble-drawing”, the “aide-memoire” that triggers the memory. Arbitrariness is unbidden and deadly. Drawing the line again makes the entire process an anologue to the experience, and to live, it must have this character. All the sensations of that momentary event live again as I find marks, layers, dots, hatches, smacks, strings, spills, patches and all hues that can be true to the experience they relive. Graphite and photocopy toner redraw the lines, thick, dark, spiky, slow areas of stickiness move into swift curving lines, rubber tire squeal of the speeding vehicle. Single and double meanders, loops, spirals, whorls, single and doubled figure eights horse around within the square picture plane, square because it holds a whole constellation of sensations, an idea in time, rather than trying to represent a scene. Fast, wet, drippy washes of paint overlay graphite and toner, creating smudges in the dark, like blue smoke exhaust or perfume from milkweed. Surfaces smooth and glossy and forward assert themselves over calm matte volumes of recession. Edges of thick calligraphic paint squiggles catch light and play the surface like a dance. Certain areas within the square format are heavily worked, while others, lying ahead or behind, are left blank as canvas or plywood.
The Speeding Subject
©Mary Joyce