Timepieces, silverpoint and meteorite on gesso and silverpoint medium on panel, 30″ x 40″… imagery variable and changing. Pictures show phases of several of the same panels, from 2020 onwards. There are eight panels, of which seven are currently in rotation and revision.
Artist’s Narrative
Nature changes. The artist changes too and so the Timepieces drawings change while made and viewed. For example, silverpoint tarnishes. It also reflects light such that dark lines can appear bright. Unlike a contour-drawing of a fixed view (like an outline portrait of a bird), my methods rely on gesture-drawing of unfixed patterns of movements (like the drumming wingbeats of a bird’s flight). Inspirations include sunlight refracting in water, the wind in trees, layered erosions, and even shifting memories. These patterns need timing to relay form and measure. Within a rectangular 3:4 ratio, often each drawing grows over 3 months within one of 4 seasons. Then the artistry continues. Each piece remains reworkable, reusable. New layers are added before and after exhibit. Everything flows, everything changes, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. These artworks resemble other types of abstraction, but instead of grandiose mural-sized permanent paintings from ideas of Modernist essentialism (or postmodern relativism), the Timepieces are smaller, impermanent, renewable, and borne of philosophical naturalism. Although they are inspired by the syntaxes of nature and science, they neither depict images nor explain scientific or philosophical concepts. Instead, they both are and embrace change as artful physics through drawing, as visual moments to be viewed, borne of ways that nature keeps moving.
Visual inspirations
What is gesture drawing
Notes about art materials such as silverpoint
Notes about concepts of time and nature.
Gregory Scheckler 