Drawn, Hung and Cornered. Drawings by Emyr Williams and John Bunker.

About

We had a discussion on the subject of drawing and how much we both loved it. As artists working primarily in an abstract way, we were acutely aware of its significance, yet found it difficult to fully pin down its functionality. We decided it would be a challenge to prioritise the impulse to draw again and show the results.

I have long considered the word drawing to mean ‘making’ in the fullest sense of the word. Drawing forms the spine of my painting; how everything is put together is down to the drawing. I make study drawings and improvised drawings constantly too - in different sized books and on different supports.

I am intrigued by the enhanced impetus to be specific that single tone drawing demands. My recent paintings were made with a range of different brushes; brushes of different shape, weight and thickness and  I wanted to continue using brushes in a direct way and decided that ink enabled me to do this. The immediacy and flow of the medium also appeals to me. Brush drawing has an intimacy and a directness that feels unerringly personal, and even a little unsettling. You have to face your demons.

Emyr Williams 2015

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of making a group of abstract drawings in reaction to a book or texts that have moved me in some way. We are used to seeing drawing as a form of depiction, no matter how loose, of some kind of keenly observed world of appearances or an internalised world of fantasy. We are also used to thinking about abstract art as being quite literally 'in a world of its own’. Is it really possible for abstract drawings to find visual equivalents for the complex sensations and human feeling that a good story evokes with such force? Collage creates many varieties of edges and spaces. But drawing gives access to another kind of immediacy. It offers a way of using line to react intuitively to divergent surfaces and colour. Conversely mark making can suggest the different directions other materials might take a drawing. Cutting, ripping and layering can create their own sense of drama in drawn space inventing new and unpredictable interpenetrations of form and colour.
These drawings started from a word, phrase or a descriptive passage from the book Moby Dick. But each drawing soon took on a life of its own.

John Bunker 2015.