inspiration, creativity, freedom

lifemaps in frame, originally uploaded by jamila l.

I have always loved mark making. There is something about drawing that lulls me into another world. A space where my awareness of myself dissipates and I find myself yearning. For a long time I had no idea what the feeling meant. I was preoccupied with a deep nostalgia, a sense of both loss and renewal. I wanted something, but I didn’t know what my focus was.

Aesthetics, although important, did not drive my urge to draw. It was the process itself. Mark after mark, repetitive and soothing. Like being in transit, the safety of being neither here nor there. But there is a frustration in not knowing your target, all activities need a focus. Process was not enough for me, it was not a technical exercise nor an investigation into the language of drawing. What I wanted to understand is almost too contrite to put into words, I wanted to capture meaning, know what meaning was, situate myself within purpose itself.

But my framework was such that there could be no true meaning. I longed for something that I felt was impossible. I associated it with language because I knew that it couldn’t be contained by language, and so I felt that by sitting on the edge of written forms, I was close to what I was looking for. I wanted to turn language inside out to expose what it is not, what we are not, in the hope that we might find what we need. But words fumble and I am not adept with them and so I turned back to making marks.

I began to map myself, to take myself from being an accumulation of memories into something new. And it was the process that could cause the transformation as with each stroke and dot, I floated. Was this meditation? I wasn’t really sure, but I was aware that in this space I felt simultaneously more like myself than ever and almost completely un self-conscious. Wasn’t that a contradiction?

Now as a “religious person”, I would describe my love of drawing as a spiritual endeavor. But then, my only framework was academic. I was stuck with the impossible task of theorizing that which couldn’t be theorized. And I knew it! Now as I contemplate entering back into the artworld, I know I’ll be faced once more with the unpalatable prospect of explaining myself. And I’m very hesitant. I’d rather just sit in my room making dots!