Article published in the Easel Words section of The Jackdaw magazine

Art critic Laura Gascoigne recently invited me to write about my new drawings for the Easel Words section of The Jackdaw magazine (Nov/Dec 2022 issue).

I chose to focus on the drawing ‘Wagtail with observant crow and person’ and enjoyed the challenge of describing the ways I look and draw within 500 words. It was exciting to feel the process of writing crystalising thoughts which had arisen intuitively as I drew.

If you’re curious to find out more, scroll down to read the full article….

First published in: The Jackdaw, Independent Views on the Visual Arts, Nov/Dec 2022, No. 166, p.11 © 2022. Jackdaw Newsletters Limited 2022.

Alexandra Blum Easel Words

I love looking. I draw to see more, to discover and record the interactions between part and whole, and between myself and the wider world. In May 2022, I moved into a new studio, on the fifth floor of a warehouse in the centre of Westminster Industrial Estate next to the Thames Barrier, London. Since moving in, I've been intensively drawing the incredible, ever-changing landscape which surrounds the building.

Looking out from my studio window, a crow’s movement as it lands upon a column catches my eye. This becomes the starting point for my drawing, later titled ‘Wagtail with observant crow and person’. The drawing grows outwards from the crow, its composition unplanned, responding to the events taking place as I draw.

My pencil follows the lines of the crow’s gaze, the graphite marks becoming increasingly linear as they slowly trace around the materials dumped in recycling skips. Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s definition of ‘wayfaring’ as a process whereby a person moves through a landscape whilst maintaining an ‘active engagement with the country that opens up along [their] path’ (Ingold, Tim. ‘Lines, A brief history’, 2007. Routledge Classics, 2016, p.78) feels very relevant to the way I mentally travel through the space as I draw.

Drawing in this way is a tactile process too. I’m discovering the landscape gradually, as if feeling my way through the dark, rather than creating a perspectival plan of the entire space from a fixed viewpoint at the outset of the drawing.

When I begin ‘Wagtail’, the crow feels like the drawing’s epicentre. But, as the drawing expands, the crow’s influence fades. My pencil reaches fencing, with flame like spikes. A person wanders into the fenced area, also surveying the scene. They disappear and a high-pitched creaking re-focusses my attention on the recycling crusher which has begun rolling back and forth in another skip.

An unexpected, close, movement catapults me to the bottom left foreground: a tiny wagtail bird is about to perch upon the window ledge I am drawing from. It sees me looking back, screeches to a halt, makes a handbrake turn and disappears. I draw the wagtail rapidly, mainly from memory, its delicate feet becoming enormous in my mind, as they stretched out towards me. I love the way that switching between different drawing languages enables the graphite marks to become traces of the pace and character of the events observed as I draw. Utilising the extreme edges of the composition feels exciting too. It prevents the picture surface from becoming a window framing a view, in turn helping to make myself and the viewer active participants in the space, able to respond with the entire body not just the eyes.

I would like anyone looking at my drawings to be able to travel through them. Not necessarily following the route I took, but free to choose their own pathway encountering, as they travel, the events which took place as I observed the landscape.

Alexandra Blum was awarded the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize 2019. Her work will be included in ‘A Sense of Place’, 13th December 2022 – 7th January 2023 at Bermondsey Project Space, London. www.alexblum.co.uk

Click here to find out more about The Jackdaw magazine.