I’m flicking through a magazine from 2007 that features a dossier about the German city of HAMBURG. The pictures in the article are very good, especially when it comes to colour. This contemplation makes me think about colour and painting, about line and form… and I arrive at the question I pose myself again and again: to draw or not to draw? In posing this question I am not doubting the importance of drawing, which I consider essential for a painter. I am wondering about the importance and independence of drawing within art. Drawing is in itself an art form, as is sculpture or poetry.
And now I pose myself the same question: to draw or not to draw? What I mean is whether or not there’s a need to draw a guide on the canvas before painting. Some artists say drawing helps with the composition of the work and others give various explanations as to why it is preferable to draw before painting. All positions are valid as long as they contribute to the artist’s freedom of expression. And this is precisely the crux of the matter: the need for an unbounded creative freedom that can however sometimes be hindered by a sketch which is drawing out the path the work must follow. One could argue that sketches are useful insomuch as they help place figures and other elements of the painting correctly, but I would argue to the contrary. I believe that more than helping the painter, what a pre-drawing does is cause a clash between drawing and colour, between line and form. The artist becomes an arbitrator in a conflict provoked by himself and gets distracted from his true mission, which is PAINTING. He must do so with his hands and his gut. Any preliminary drawing forces the painter to follow those lines… even when they’ve been drawn by himself; and this inevitably causes that unbounded creative freedom to dwindle, even for a moment of “trance” when you become a mere instrument in the creative process. That state of being and not being, requires a state of lucidity that can only be found in the dedication of a novice, for every new work is an independent entity that wants to be born free and show itself in all its splendor, without any “smudges”.
Many may wonder whether the Old Masters, who even used grids on their canvases, painted with freedom or not. To this I will say that the Old Masters used these methods in order to reproduce a painting they had already created, so that was really the second or third phase of this “reproduction”.
In fact, those “true Masters” who have existed and still do exist to this day, and who outline the work on the canvas before painting, do work with creative freedom as well. The finished work is not done OVER the preliminary sketch; their creative work begins with that very drawing which is already a part of that creation.
In all of my writings, some of which are philosophical and theological wanderings about art and some of which are mere musings, my only intention –sometimes realized- is to express a series of thoughts, ideas and conclusions that come to me from my work over time. I don’t intend to propose an absolute truth; they are my truth… And that is the moment I chose to bare myself as an artist and express myself through painting with the utmost purity, despite external and internal influences that result from my incapacities.
Jorge Rando, Hamburg, July 2007