Category Archives: Pencil

“Double Erasure – Winter Field” does double Wells

Double Erasure: Winter Field - drawing on paper by David Smith

“Double Erasure: Winter Field”
Multiply erased graphite on Canaletto paper 495mm x 695mm

I was delighted a couple of years back to have this piece, “Double Erasure: Winter Field”, shortlisted for the Wells Art Contemporary Awards. That was at the historic Bishop’s Palace at Wells in Somerset. I am doubly delighted that it is now selected for the inaugural show, “Connections” at the stunning new Wells Maltings cultural hub in Wells-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk

It’s always great to be included in an exhibition but the reason I am especially pleased to be part of this show is my history with the North Norfolk Coast, particularly Holkham Bay which is just to the East of Wells-Next-The-Sea. Work about that beach and the landscape behind it sparked the idea of my Tidelines project (which I hope one day soon to fulfill) and was instrumental in me reconnecting to my art practice and subsequently committing to it as a full-time, professional engagement.

This piece is from my erasure and redaction work, rooted in the landscape and coastline, which explores how the traces of history and events are never completely obliterated but can still be read and forever influence the present. The marks are made and erased, made and erased, like the similar-yet-unique patterns in the sand are made and erased twice each day. This piece specifically relates to Holkham West Sands, the marshes behind and the Essex marshes where I grew up.

Shortlisted for the Bath Open Art Prize

This Is Where The Party Ends - abstract drawing by David Smith

This Is Where The Party Ends
Graphite, ink & Magic Tape on Snowdon cartridge paper 59cm x 84cm

I really like the energy of Bath’s FaB Festival and the Bath Open Art Prize that for me is at its heart, so I am hugely pleased to be included in a show which unashamedly includes work that is quirky and unusual. The show is on at 44AD from 25 May to 10 June 2018

Art-as-art, Art-as-art, Yeah!

"Art-as-art, Art-as-art, Yeah!" large abstract drawing by David Smith

“Art-as-art, Art-as-art, Yeah!”
Pencil on Snowdon cartridge 59cm x 84cm

The title of this piece comes from Andrew Hamilton’s “For People Who Like Art” which I was listening to as I finished it off. The words of Hamilton’s piece are taken from Ad Reinhardt’s “25 Lines of Words on Art Statement” so my title is quoting a quote. I have been really caught by his music and I had already started work on an another piece (still in progress) inspired by though not trying to represent this composition, which I am calling “For Musicians Who Like Art”. Hamilton has a number of works titled, “For…” which echos some of the titles of another composer I admire, Morton Feldman. Notably, Feldman wrote “For Philip Guston” and “For Franz Kline” among other work about art or artists. So my title, “For Musicians Who Like Art”, is an echo of an echo. I will post more about this when i have finished it and have got some decent photographs. Andrew Hamilton kindly sent me the score of the piece and I am thinking about doing more work directly related to his music. (I also have it in mind to do some work responding to Meredith Monk’s work!)

If you want to hear my favourite recording of Hamilton’s “For People Who Like Art” by Crash Ensemble you can do so on SoundCloud

More added to the “X Marks The Spot” series

More Dirty Work At The Crossroads - contemporary, abstract drawing by David Smith

More Dirty Work At The Crossroads
Graphite, ink and collage 59cm x 84Cm

I have been continuing working on my X Marks The Spot series which started at the end of the 50 Collages Before Christmas project I did last year. The last one I posted, X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet took the work into the area of conflict, confusion and misdirection, so it is no surprise that I continued the theme when asked to exhibit at The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock, in Art On Conflict to tie in with Jenny Holzer’s SOFTER installation at Blenheim Palace.

The three pieces here will accompany X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet to Woodstock in what I am sure will be a fascinating and provoking exhibition.

Forget Not The Righteous Tsunami Of Hokusai - contemporary drawing by David Smith

Forget Not The Righteous Tsunami Of Hokusai
Graphite, acrylic & collage on Snowdon cartridge paper 59cm x 84cm

At Cross Purposes - contemporary drawing by David Smith

At Cross Purposes
Erased graphite, Magic Tape and acrylic on Snowdon cartridge paper 59cm x 84cm

 

X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet

"X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet" abstract drawing by David Smith

“X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet “
Erased graphite, Magic Tape and stickers on Snowdon cartridge paper 59cm x 84cm

After a period when I could not work on large drawings because of a bad back, I am now back on form and have been working on a strand of the erasure work I began during my 50 Collages Before Christmas project.

Detail from "X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet" abstract drawing by David Smith

“X Marks The Spot Where We Buried The Hatchet” – detail
Erased graphite, Magic Tape and stickers on Snowdon cartridge paper 59cm x 84cm

Shortlisted for Wells Art Contemporary Awards

Double Erasure: Winter Field - drawing on paper by David Smith

“Double Erasure: Winter Field”
Multiply erased graphite on Canaletto paper 495mm x 695mm

I am delighted that “Double Erasure: Winter Field” has been shortlisted for the Wells Art Contemporary Awards 2016 and will be on show at The Bishop’s Palace, Wells 8 – 22 October and is already featured on the WAC website

The forecast is more erasure!

Image of drawing in the process of being erased

Erasure in progress

I have been doing more erased drawings and feel there is plenty more that I want to explore in the area of partial deletion, redaction, becoming unseen. So I expect there will be a lot of eraser dust to deal with in the coming weeks. Featured below are a few pieces I have finished recently and am happy with. The first I have called “Double Erasure: Winter Field”. It continues the tidal theme of “Double Erasure – that soft spot in my heart” but connects back to some of my earliest field drawings.

Double Erasure: Winter Field - drawing on paper by David Smith

“Double Erasure: Winter Field”
Multiply erased graphite on Canaletto paper 495mm x 695mm

The second is a reprise of a piece I did for the secret sale to support Bridport Arts Centre but in larger format. That earlier one was called “We two erased black squares together clinging” so this one is “We two erased black squares together clinging too”

We two erased black squares together clinging too - erased pencil drawing by David Smith

“We two erased black squares together clinging too”
Erased pencil on Canaletto paper 302mm x 216mm

I have also been exploring the use of colour with erased drawings, using ink, watercolour and or Inktense pencils over the erased graphite, as can be seen in this detail from “Ashes and embers”

"Ashes and embers" drawing in watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper by David Smith

“Ashes and embers”
Watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper

The whole thing looks like this:

"Ashes and embers" Watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper by David Smith

“Ashes and embers”
Watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper 381mm x 559mm

And another similar exploration:

"Otherwise unseen" Watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper by David Smith

“Otherwise unseen”
Watercolour and ink on erased graphite on Saunders Waterford paper 381mm x 559mm

Shortlisted for Wells Art Contemporary

Wells Art Contemporary 2015 shortlist

Wells Art Contemporary 2015 shortlist (screengrab from WAC website) featuring my name

I am delighted and honoured to be included on the shortlist for this year’s Wells Art Contemporary Awards. It is quite a new open competition for contemporary visual art that is gaining praise and respect in Britain and abroad. One of the reasons I entered was the quality of artists who entered in previous years, but the main reason was the high calibre of the judges who this year are Mariele Neudecker (Sculptor and multimedia artist), Donald Smith (Director of Exhibitions, Chelsea Space, who curated an excellent Derek Jarman show a while back) and Richard Wentworth (Sculptor and conceptual artist) These three judges initially viewed all the submissions anonymously and then the resulting shortlist was reviewed by a further panel “the 45 Park Lane Artists” comprising Sir Peter Blake, Brendan Neiland, Bruce McLean, Christian Furr, Joe Tilson, Martin Fuller, Patrick Hughes, Brad Faine, Donald Smith, and Tom Phillips.This process produced the final choice of works selected for the Wells exhibition which runs 9-24 October 2015 at the Wells and Mendip Museum. The prize winners  will be agreed after the selected works have been curated. (The curator is Roy Ackerman.)

The piece that has been selected is a drawing, “Double Erasure – that soft spot in my heart” (pictured below)

Abstract graphite drawing by david Smith

“Double Erasure – that soft spot in my heart”
Multiply-erased graphite drawing on Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm

Further experiments with erasure

Tissue paper over drawing by David Smith

Tissue paper lain over the almost completed double erasure drawing (detail)

I am increasingly interested in the idea of veiling work so the viewer has to work harder to see what they are looking at and have used semi-opaque papers in collages to mute and soften images below. I am considering using etched and frosted glass in front of some pieces, in particular some black square ideas that are 3D or relief pieces. The image above was totally by chance when I covered the erasure drawing I was doing with tissue to protect it till I returned to make any final adjustments. I am certainly tempted to experiment with more veiling, maybe with silk voile or cotton muslin. Perhaps I should go the whole hog and use black perspex or something totally opaque like black-sprayed metal to cover work?

Last year the show I had in Ramsgate was called “The Seen and the Unseen”. That refered partly to #Letter365 being sold unseen but also to the fact that my work is designed to make the eye unsure of what it is actually seeing (amongst other invisible aspects). During the #Letter365 process I had a number of conversations with people who liked the idea of never opening the letters and Schrödinger’s Cat was mentioned on a number of the envelopes and in many conversations.

So much of my work has been inspired by the sea’s marks on the shore and the transient and uncontrollable nature of our existence. It could be said that much of my work is an attempt to freeze a record of those unseen forces at play in the littoral landscape and my mind and emotions. Perhaps my work should move towards even more conceptual and ephemeral work?

For now, I have this piece to finish off. I have not seen it for a few days and other issues may arise when I do, but the biggest question I had when I left it was “how much do I clean up the edges and how big a border”? Of course it still needs a signature, which will, of course, be erased!

Detail of edge of erased drawing by David Smith

How much cleaning up at the edges of this erased drawing should I do?

Erasure drawings

Erased black square 1 - drawing by David Smith

Erased black square 1
Pencil and eraser on Canaletto paper

It may seem odd that my work on black squares and my Tidelines theme are intimately linked but it is all a continuum. This latest phase – erasing and redrawing and erasing again for as many times as necessary to get the effect I want – mirrors the tide’s twice-daily erasing of the sand patterns and debris on the beach; rubbed out but leaving a trace of the history of previous times and tides. I am experimenting with various surfaces. These featured are on 300gsm Canaletto paper. It is thick enough not to buckle and stretch too much and robust enough to take repeated erasure yet still soft enough to hold the indentation of an HB pencil.

Deatial of paper surface

Detail of surface after repeated erasing and redrawing

I have chosen to use traditional pencils rather than a clutch pencil because it allows a greater degree of chaos to enter the mix. The sharpness wearing to bluntness and my reaction to it in the marks I make, plus the length of the pencil affecting my grip on it as it gets shorter, are important elements in the content of the works.

Drawing by David Smith

Erased black square 2

The piece I began today (detail below) is on a full sheet of Canaletto paper 500mm x 700mm on which I have created a semi-accurate ruled grid. I am using what I believe to be HB pencils that were liberated from conference rooms at various hotels 20 years ago – knew they would come in handy! I may have to buy some more as they are disappearing at an alarming rate. In future drawings I may use harder pencils depending on what the surface of chosen paper suggests. For the first layer I am trying to be pretty loose and not get into my usual rythmns and shapes. I am listening to Soft Machine and at times using my left hand. Once this “ground” has been established, with the general shape and form of the piece tentatively mapped in, I will be more controlled about the marks I make after each successive erasure.

Start of a graphite erasure drawing by David Smith

First layer of marks (detail) on an as yet untitled erasure drawing