About one-line drawing

Working in one-continuous line drawings is more like a technique for me. My favourite way of working since the mid 90s, it is the seemingly restrictive way of working that holds for me the key to true perception. Not only of objects, subjects, things, but their relation to each other, their shared rhythm, their breath.

Not unlike the medium who holds the pen in automatic writing, and not unlike the seismograph picking up the faintest tremors, it is a well-choreographed and spontaneous dance between two worlds. The world of intuition and pure expression and the world of analysis and keen perception.

The bridge between the brain hemispheres is a busy place, sparkling, ecstatic.

There are wide gestures, drawn fast, criss-crossing the paper, but always coming home in elaborate, detailed sections. Often the work is not knitted along and spreading but draws itself from the outside to the inside, and back again. The work goes beyond the mere object as connection gets celebrated and heightened. Connector lines span from shape to shape, as real as anything. I like to call them energy lines as they infuse with life, arteries no less.

And there is always fear. The process needs surrender and faith. Stray but a little and what ought to be alive turns wooden, mannerist, barely alive. Being swept away with a controlled eye, that’s what it is. Because there is no correcting, erasing, just a Zen-like moment in time. On a good day you feel a pulse, and that makes it all worthwhile.

Watercolours seem a natural fit for my dervish lines, unruly and free-flowing yet ultimately controlled. Applying washes requires waterproof ink.