I have chosen, in the end, to look deeply into things
When I am working, each drawing becomes like a diary, a record of sensations and my encounters with the world. My feelings, my body are supported on the raft of the drawing – it is the place for expression without analysis or judgment. A place that is accessible but locked away most of the time. It is a movement, a dance, the pleasure of being swept away – sometimes I ignore it, sometimes I seek it out. All I know is that the experience can resonate through my body like a bell. In those series of moments I feel most alive without being aware. It is as if I am inscribing my body into drawing, into the activity of drawing, into each stroke. In those mute moments, in the co-ordination of hand and eye, I make the journey of the periphery into the centre, into symmetry. What I am doing is not ordinary in the sense that many people do exactly this, but it feels ordinary – humble, basic and at the same time extraordinary.
Amanda Robins, Tudor Rose (Open Coat 1), 2002, 115 x 178
Pencil on Arches watercolor paper
When I enter the world of the object – the enveloping garment – I lose myself. I gain the moment and timelessness; I gain the perfection of pursuing the everyday. I spend my time in following the object’s existence in the series of moments during which we are intimately connected. It is a form of meditation directed by pure functionality (if art can be said to be functional). In order to draw the object, I must inhabit its particularity; I must be a witness to the infinite detail otherwise known as reality.
– Amanda Robins, Slow Art
Image and text copyright © Amanda Robins
SLOW ART: Painting and Drawing as a Meditative Process
Amanda Robins
the awakened eye 