“There is a difference,” Gillian says, “between drawing and making a drawing.”
“The process, my love,” says Shakya Leone, “savour the process. It’s all we really have.”
And Gregory David Roberts says “We are, ourselves, expressions of that process. Our bodies are the children of all the suns and other stars that died, before us, making the atoms that we are made of.”
The process of drawing: finding the shapes; looking; the sound of the pencil as it drags across the page; the smell of charcoal; finding the lines; finding the tones; making the marks until, at long last, you can stand back and say “this is what I wanted to express.”
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When I was twenty years old, I saw an exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. It was a series of mock-up stages, with glockenspiel music playing, and William Kentridge animations of acrobatic rhinoceroses. This was all in preparation for The Magic Flute, the very first sneak peaks that I saw. And years later I payed a fortune for a seat at the edge of the theatre, and we watched the opera, and laughed at the jokes, and marvelled at the imagery – and I was disappointed.
In the end, the result didn’t live up to the promise that was made while the work was early in the process.
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Back to Process. I’m all about Process. But I’m hesitant to share every step.
What if you find the end result disappointing?