Bigger than yourself

Carly, seated. 4x5 feet, Charcoal on Paper

Many an art student will relate to drawing on 8.5x11" printer paper. In high school, you might get a 9x12" sketch book from your teacher in Art 3. This increased space is a new world to be explored and an expansion of boundaries. One's limits are still there, just greater in extent. Still more do you feel your limits increased in college when you move on to the 18x24" drawing pad. More revolutionary still is cutting your own paper to size from a roll. We tend to adjust to and accept our limits as conditions of existence.

Working large reminds me that I have a body and with that body comes a range of motions. My recent involvement in our Agape performing arts show reinforced the possibly performative and definitely dance-like aspects of drawing on the human scale.

Drawing large is the best way to work. By large I mean drawing in a way that one can be sympathetic to the range of human movement involved. What is so satisfying about working on a drawing that is five feet wide, is that it echoes my embodiment in the world. I have to face the constraints of my existence in space, I have to feel my own weight, experience the fatigue in my shoulders as I make marks repeatedly over the span of my reach.

When you draw "large" you have to be honest about your physicality and limits. If I want to do a drawing that is seven feet tall and 14 feet wide, I'll be covering a lot of ground before its over. I'll have to stoop to reach the bottom and reach to address the top of the composition. I'll  burn copious calories. My movements will multiply on the level of individual rotations of limb at joint to become compound, synergistic marks.

In a "large" drawing, marks become a reflection of an intimate hypothetical exploration of a space. This exploration is recorded in something so simple, and primitive as carbon. Wood reduced to it's fundamental, elemental existence.