Eleanor MacFarlane: Mapping the Territory 5

Having well documented my difficulties in understanding and approaching this project, and having racked by brains for solutions, I have at last put pencil to paper, and permanent marker to glass. I have come up with something of a solution to an interpretation of the problem.

Art seems all about giving yourself problems and then solving them.

In aiming for something simple, I have had to match up and marry opposing elements in my head, and visualise how to harmonise them through mediums which also correspond to and convey my intentions.

I am using several frames, just the frame and glass. Normally in using frames I would repaint them and fix them up, but for this project I really like the found and random elements of the frames as they are - including a couple that are broken in some way. It adds to the happenstance of placing the frames onto the main one to create something else.

I have done an enormous amount of visualising and imagining solutions to this drawing exercise, to the extent that it again confounds the brief in thinking through drawing. I scribbled what I have been imagining:

The main frame would have radiating lines out, the outline framework upon which others will lie.

The lines themselves will have embedded images or information, really the key or symbols of the map.

Furthermore, the map is to suggest a shape or figure, sectioned, parts comprising the total.

The lines of images I am using will be shadowy figures, rooftops,

nature, bottles,

music, books,

eyes/vision, abstracts.

I am using permanent marker pen directly onto the glass. The large frame is awkward to stretch over and draw onto. I draw the lines on the large frame, then trace parts of the lines onto the smaller frames.

Already there are interesting things happening between the lines, the frames, the main frame, and the odd angles the outlines take in relation to each other.
I have placed it all on white board to work on for now.

In bare skeletal lines I already like what is happening, with the linear layered relationships going on. Lines and frames can be layered on top of each other, and rearranged according to whichever logic you are following. Moreover, there are special depths of lines which occur when they are closely overlayed, strangely adding a filmic or timebased quality, in that there are many things happening at once, and you can see each in turn, then all together.

Drawing with marker pen on glass is a medium of limitations and possibilities. It is certainly fumey. I always seem to like to go over drawings alot in parts - to maintain as much of the initial sketching and speed of gesture as possible, but to texturise, merge, erase, dig in, and carve out a drawing.

I then drew on the big and smaller frames the lines of images - the shadows, rooftops, bottles, etc, then overlaid these onto the main lines. They can be laid according to line, according matching types of images, according to different images.

I am also thinking of adding the element of colour, again as another key to the map, shading areas in blocks according to what the colour represents.

With all these elements in place and functional, I can now wipe off everything and start anew. The main frame is still not fully resolved in my mind - what I really would like instead of a sectioned body is an ambiguous image, some sort of Rubin's vase or simple optical illusion, to make the map more of a picture, and again, one with more than one take. But there is no real relevance of a duck and a rabbit, or two faces and a vase, and after trying to contrive something more relevant, I realised I was giving even more complication to myself which was perhaps unnecessary for this piece.