What Am I Thinking?

That is the question I have been asking myself all week. I continue to make drawings by dipping various materials, mostly cardboard and foamcore, in India Ink and making marks by pressing their inky edges on the paper. In a way the results are a form of monotype, just one where the print is built piece by piece, mark by mark. I've been fustrated by the results and have resolved to move on a number of times. And yet I return to this technique feeling like I haven't really pinpointed what it is I'm after conceptually and visually. There are a few things I like in the process; the removal of the hand in the mark making, the inky splattered quality of the mark, and the process moves along relativly quickly. So these are the latest drawings using this approach, created just this week. Based on simple geometry, really more arithmatic based than geometry base. In retrospect, I find both the process and the result meditative. Once the concept is determined, the execution follows, an idea straight out of Sol LeWitt's '15 sentences on art'. The finished drawings are like 'mandalas', made to be stared at. They alude to many things, I don't want to mention what, but this morning I Googled; TV test patterns, Parcheesi, various city plans, rubiks cube, Japanese window screens, Chinese window screens, mandalas, Sol LeWitt...

At this point there are four drawings in the series. I'd like to create nine all together, there seems to be a nice symmetry in that number given there are nine squares made up of nine smaller squares in each drawing. The drawings are large, the paper at this point is 42 x 50 inches, but could be trimmed at some point. The inked area is approximatly 28 by 28 inches in each drawing and all are made with India Ink on Strathmore water color paper.