Form and space

The weekend drawing course around Giacometti and the form in the space. The tutor wanted us to feel how Giacometti looked at not just the form that he was drawing but also at the space in which the form sat or found itself. Like text and context in language analysis, the form creates the space but is also created by the space, and the space comes to have form. I suppose it's more than negative space -- an idea that I have relished since I came across it in art -- since the negative space is the shape of space created by the object one's trying to draw while this idea has space as more actively changing the form.

I did experience the Giacometti phenomenon of the form changing shape the more you look at it and the more you draw it, and that helped understand his feeling that he could never capture what he was trying to.

Later on, I thought about how his images emerge from drawing line after line after line. The act of looking changes or what you see and notice; that means that the line you've just drawn is no longer quite right and you need to draw another line. Eventually through the overlapping of lines and the darkness that creates, we start to see an image that is amazingly accurate -- or that feels amazingly accurate at least. The multiple, shifting strokes on the paper produce a form that makes sense to the viewing eye (my software typed "viewing I").

I connect this to the metaphors I see in my language data. Forms in space; forms created through multiple, shifting strokes of language.

Another woman I knew is dying, I heard today. Too many. I thought about her life as I knew of it; caring, busy, enthusiastically reaching out for new experiences. (Now I am trying to type "thinking" and the software hears me say: Clinging Sinking...) Thinking led to wanting to paint and the thoughts led to vermillion that needed sparkling silver.