OCA drawing 1.1

 Explore the limits of paper and scissors materially through adopting Henri Matisse’s idea of making compositions from cut pieces of painted paper. Adopting Matisse’ term “drawing with scissors” explore the possibilities of making drawings using limited tools (scissors / knife) and paper as your material. 

I have always felt connected to the landscape, and its impact on me is daily sustenance.

I wanted to use this project to surpass an imaginary boundary that is forcing me to conform to the same ideals when it comes to viewing and manifesting what I experience.

Using unfamiliar materials deepens observation.

I am looking for the essence of the subject.  The landscape offers many natural painterly qualities, but I seek out more sculptural properties.

I begin by reducing the vistas to basic shapes and forms.

I have been collecting different types of papers.  And I sit and cut them in alignment with what Im observing.  In the same way that I would sketch with pencil and paper.  Familiarising myself with the subject.

Patches of land, light, rock faces, cloud bands

Walls of trees rising above the tapestry of fields and trails

Contours stitching it altogether.  

Layers, sides, and faces

Strong, brittle

Infinite

Right here

It’s not as habitual as you would assume.  You think you know the shapes of these places, but you don’t.

There’s a place between the idea and the process that needs explorations and experimentation.  It’s where technique is forged and the act of relating the subject to the materials.

Using scissors as a drawing tool, a line is not a line and a cut is not just a cut.

It needs life.  As I found from working with charcoal in the previous project.  I wanted to get spontaneity into the cut…….

So I started to try and replicate the elements.  Nature erodes, soaks, dries, creases, freezes, thaws.  I try the same. Wet the paper, let it dry, shave the edges, rub away, add glazes, crumple it and pull it out again.  Cover it in earthy mediums like chalk, water based pigments, crayons.  Use scalpels, sanding blocks, scissors, blunt knives.  

Change the tempo, cut fast and loose, or considered and precise.  

At first the cuts and shapes are clumsy, manipulated and laboured, but then a connection is made and they start to flow, and feel like something I recognise.

What qualities do the papers have that relate to the subject?

Transparency (layers), natural creases (textures, contours), natural negative space, rustic qualities of recycled papers more earthy and natural to the environment they’re representing.

Constitution……..

Some papers have qualities that suit small scale, and some need a bigger stage to be useful.

Many, like cardboard have sculptural properties, or texture, like corrugated packaging wrap, that can mimic the texture in the landscape.

I became interested in the papers textures, structures, and their hidden qualities.  Granite, dirt, grass, snow, all layer up the landscape, what I knows lies beneath the snow or the heath, inspires me to look within the materials. If dissected them could I extend their use further by using their exposed infrastructure (the inside of the cardboard)? 

From that began a visible process.  The work became like a construction site, and I began to see the geology of how the pieces were coming together.

It’s important to have authenticity.  The more I immerse myself in observation and experimentation, the more synchronicity I develop between the subject and the materials.  The works starts to become more organic and less prescriptive.

When you apply yourself to a process and commit to developing and observing you start to discover a link between your materials and your subject.

There appears a distinction between what works and what is redundant.  What communicates the properties of your subject.

These studies represent a very primal and basic narration of the landscape.

List of Images

Cover Image Flockhart, K. (2024) A5 Studies, Drawing With Scissors. [Mixed media] In possession of: The author: Volleges.

Fig.1 Flockhart, K. (2024) Textured Paper, Drawing With Scissors. [Mixed media] In possession of: The author: Volleges.

Fig.2 Flockhart, K. (2024) 3D Paper Collage, Drawing With Scissors. [Mixed media] In possession of: The author: Volleges.