Someone told me my work "needed more control" and I've been chewing on it all day
A guy at a group show on Saturday looked at one of my big charcoal pieces for a while, which is already more than most people do, and then said it "needed more control." He said it kindly. That's the part that got me. If he'd been a dick I could've shrugged it off.
I've been in my head about it for two days now. Half of me knows he's right in the technical sense, there's a shoulder in that drawing that's held together by hope. The other half wants to say no, the whole point is the hand going too fast to be careful. That's not a mistake, that's the drawing.
I keep wondering if people who trained properly have a different relationship to that. Like do they hear "control" as a craft note or does it hit them somewhere else. Because for me it lands like, oh, you think I'm faking it. Which is my stuff, I know it's my stuff.
Anyway. I'm not changing the shoulder. I might fix the arm though.
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The half of you that wants to say "the hand going too fast, that's the drawing" is not wrong, but I would push you to separate two things he might be mixing: control of the mark, and control of the outcome. You can have a line that is totally reckless and still be absolutely in control of where it lands and why. Charcoal is unforgiving about this because the fast gesture only reads as fast if the slow decision underneath it is solid. So the shoulder held together by hope, yes, that is a real thing. But the answer is not to slow the hand down. It is to make the decision underneath it harder, and then go fast on top of it.
The printmaking parallel I keep coming back to is that a loose etching needle is only convincing when the plate was thought through. The freedom is the surface. The rigour is under it, invisible. Maybe that is what he felt was missing, not the speed.
I work in paper and this is the thing I keep running into: the fast tear only looks fast if I already knew where it should stop. When it reads as careless it's usually because I hadn't decided yet and was hoping the material would decide for me. So I'd agree with you, and I'd add that the decision doesn't have to be conscious in the moment. It's made over the previous fifty drawings.
"the decision doesn't have to be conscious in the moment, it's made over the previous fifty drawings." ok that reframes the whole thing for me. because I was hearing "be more careful" and what you're actually saying is do the work earlier so the hand can be free later. that I can live with. that's not the opposite of what I do, it's just further back in the process.
the tear thing is a good image too. I've got a pile of bad drawings that are basically me hoping the charcoal would decide for me. the ones that work, I knew where the edge was even if I never said it out loud
"the fast gesture only reads as fast if the slow decision underneath it is solid" ok that one landed. I've been thinking about it as fast hand vs careful hand and you're saying it's the decision that has to get harder, not slower. That reframes the whole thing and I hate it slightly less now.
But I want to push back a little. Every time I've gone back into a piece to "make the decision harder" I've killed it. The shoulder becomes correct and the drawing goes dead. How do you tell the difference between a decision that's missing and a decision you're just second guessing after the fact? Because from the inside those feel exactly the same at 2am.