Drawing as Exploration and Language as Narrative
“Drawing is simply a line going for a walk.” 1
Each day, as I walk to the studio, my urban surroundings—shifting, mundane, and full of distractions—inform my work. I observe changing forms and listen to both music and street noise, reflecting on art. This practice connects to the concept of “conscious languaging,” where language overlays visuospatial and sensorimotor maps, helping us create unified narratives. Humans, like other social mammals, use pattern recognition, symbolic thinking, and emotion to construct stories. This instinct, which predates language, is enhanced by language but is fundamentally about continually creating and narrating our experiences. 2
Figure 1. Sally Barron, Street, 2024, photograph.
Narrative Construction
When I go for a walk, I naturally construct narratives from what I observe, piecing details into a cohesive story. For example, seeing a blooming flower might remind me of changing seasons and personal memories. This shows how humans are "storytelling animals," linking observations to broader narratives.
Pattern Recognition
During my walks, I recognize patterns in familiar sights, sounds, and smells. Seeing people with umbrellas might prompt me to anticipate rain, helping me understand my environment. These observations help make sense of the world around me.
Figure 2. Sally Barron, Aphrodite, collage and oil on paper, 22 cm x 30 cm.
Emotional and Aesthetic Responses
I appreciate the beauty of my surroundings, and my walks often evoke emotions connected to memories, enriching my narrative. Much of this perception occurs subconsciously, illustrating how I perceive the environment without explicit language.
Simulation and Prediction
I use mental simulations to predict outcomes and solve problems, like choosing the best route or avoiding crowds. These simulations contribute to the ongoing narrative of my journey.
Figure 3. Sally Barron, News, collage and oil on paper, 22 cm x 30 cm.
Visual Expression as a Tool
Making images helps me capture and reflect on my observations and experiences, translating them into visual form and organizing my perceptions.
Figure 4. Sally Barron, Street, photograph, 22 cm x 30 cm.
Figure 5. Sally Barron, yellow, collage and oil on paper, 22 cm x 30 cm.
What I try to do is to create images without relying on language:
Use Abstract Forms: Convey ideas through shapes, colors, and compositions without explicit labels.
Focus on Sensory Details: Capture textures, colors, and forms to express sensory experiences.
Reflect Emotions: Let your images convey feelings and moods through visual elements.
Explore Space and Time: Show movement and change through your compositions.
Opt for Non-Objective Design: Create images that suggest meaning through arrangement rather than definition.
Trust Your Instincts: Use intuition to guide your creative process, making spontaneous choices.
Figure 6. Sally Barron, street, photograph, 22 cm x 30 cm.
Figure 7. Sally Barron, Map, collage and oil on paper, 22 cm x 30 cm.
Before I ‘name’ something I see it, so it is helpful to be as open to that idea of non-judgment, merely seeing colour, shape and form without constructing language around it. This is becoming easier as I practice.
Upon arriving at the studio I make a collage with studio scraps (see fig. 4).
Figure 8. Sally Barron, Like Air, collage and oil on paper, 25 cm x 35 cm.
Figure 9. Sally Barron, street, 2024, photograph
Figure 10. Sally Barron, street, 2024, photograph
Walking and thinking
Walking and looking
Walking and listening.
Duality is a quality I try and bring into my paintings that is inspired by this activity, the macro and the micro, the eye and brain in flux while pointing to ideas of growth, creation and change.
Using leftover materials in the studio is a way to address the ecological crisis and make the most of the resources I have. When I find random pieces of paper or canvas, I let their shape and surface dictate the image I create. I appreciate how these technical aspects add unexpected content and texture to my work, introducing elements beyond my control.
Female Abstract Contemporary Artists I am engaging with.
Aimee Parrott
Aimee Parrott explores our deep connection with the environment. Her work views the human body as delicate and open, and life as temporary and uncertain. Her many processes often involves a unique approach to mono-printing, where she focuses on the process of re-inking and re-printing plates. Instead of only valuing the initial print, she finds the residual image left on the plate after the first print intriguing. This 'hand-me-down' technique allows her to build on these residual traces by printing them onto new or existing canvases, creating layered, interconnected images that echo across her body of work. 3
By layering works with repeated use of collage based on old life drawings of mine, I have a similar effect.
Works like Matrix (see fig. 11), blend mono-printing with painted and layered elements, and resist immediate visual clarity, incorporating enigmatic motifs like knots and glaciers. Their energy and layered imagery evoke a sense of impending transformation and exploration, suggesting a deeper, engagement with the physical and metaphysical realms.
Where my work currently differs from hers is in its focus on form and the dynamic way it inhabits the frame, rather than emphasising atmosphere. While Parrott's paintings use chance-based techniques to create vibrant compositions, my work highlights the deliberate shaping and placement of forms within the canvas. This involves a careful consideration of structure, edges, and spatial relationships, allowing the forms to assert themselves within the composition. By concentrating on how these forms occupy space, I aim to create a tension and energy that engages the viewer with the physicality of the work, highlighting a more structural and intentional approach (see fig. 12).
Figure 11. Matrix, 2020, ink on calico, acrylic, polymer clay, pins, thread, sapele and ply frame, 42 × 32 cm.
Figure 12. Place, 1650 x 1800 mm. Oil, collage, and charcoal on canvas.
Emma McIntrye
The New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based painter is known for her vibrant abstractions, which blend intuitive, chance-driven techniques with historical motifs and methods, resulting in a distinctive style.
McIntyre's compositions are often shaped by her use of oils and unconventional materials like oxidised steel, allowing for spontaneous and dynamic organic interactions (see fig. 13).
Figure 13. Emma McIntyre, Untitled from If Not, Winter, 2024, Monotype on Rives BFK paper, 55.3 x 74.3 cm. Framed: 64.8 x 84.5 cm.
Some of her most recent work has been created during a residency at Farrington Press, a solar-powered print shop in the remote California desert.
McIntyre collaborated with master printer Kyle Simon to produce a series of monotypes that delve into the core principles of her painting practice. Each monotype began with a vibrant wash of background color or an impression from a plate made of oxidised copper or rusted steel, creating organic and vividly pigmented hues. These backgrounds were then layered with motifs from her paintings, such as rose peonies and wheat stalks. 4
Influenced by the unique desert landscape, the works incorporate organic elements from McIntyre’s paintings, particularly her ongoing exploration of landscapes and flowers.
I'm interested in seeing how McIntyre’s process of developing background, middle ground, and foreground through print techniques informs her work. This approach helps me construct my paintings as I begin each one on the floor, layering the ground with acrylic and ink before adding oil and collage. Each layer can be repeated, except for acrylic, and I use glazing as a middle layer to achieve transparent colour effects.
As with Aimée Parrott, where I diverge from these artists currently, is that I focus on creating a more robust structure of form in my layers, often obliterating the background. I use the background as a jumping-off point rather than a stabilising ground for motifs, (see fig. 14).
Figure 14. Sally Barron, Knot, 2024, Oil on canvas, 1650 x 1800 mm.
Pam Evelyn
Pam Evelyns work is perhaps closest to my own in intention. She creates oil paintings over long periods of time. Her abstract paintings are textured with entanglements of line and colour and are informed by figuration and landscape structures, recreated through a process guided by impulse and chance.
Evelyn draws inspiration from everywhere, avoiding specific source material to embrace uncertainty in her creative process. For Evelyn, the canvas is a field of possibilities, allowing elements to come and go. This approach prevents her paintings from becoming rigid and highlights the dynamic coexistence of references and languages within contemporary painting. 5
Colour is central to Evelyn’s work, influenced by ‘found colours’ that arise from her studio habits, she often mixes paints in tubs and pots, leading to unexpected combinations. This process mirrors the harmony and disharmony of nature she observes while painting outdoors. Evelyn deliberately disrupts her colour palettes to avoid complacency, adding gritty tones to maintain tension.
Pam Evelyn begins her paintings with random, unconventional methods, often self-sabotaging before developing the work instinctively. She values the evolving colors of oil paint and the complex, muted hues they create. Facing a critical decision point in her process, Evelyn balances between resisting and engaging with the work. Inspired by Michael Krebber’s mark-making and Helen Frankenthaler’s fluid approach, she strives for a direct, immediate touch while avoiding over-effort (see fig 15). 6
I explore these ideas in future posts on Provisional Painting.
Figure 15. Pam Evelyn, Voyage (2021). Oil on linen. 300 x 200 cm.
Drawing is an integral part of Evelyn’s routine. She draws constantly, including doodles and scribbles, and even uses her scribbled handwriting as a form of drawing. This helps ‘warm up’ her hand and body. Like me, Evelyn has been inspired by Leon Kossoff’s relentless drawings. In the example below we see his drawing from Poussin’s Triumph of Pan (see fig 16 & 17), and below that, my drawing from the same painting (see fig 18).
This is a practice I use to encourage a memory bank of composition and movement.
Figure 16. The Triumph of Pan, Nicolas Poussin, 1636, Oil on Canvas.
Figure 17. Leon Kossoff, Triumph of Pan, 1998, Tate.
Figure 18. Sally Barron, Triumph of Pan (after Poussin), Coloured Pencil on Paper, 2023.
Evelyn’s tools are eclectic, including extended brushes, mops, shovels, and sponges.
I’ve found that using certain brushes becomes habitual, so I use extensions or unfamiliar tools to broaden my range and discover new possibilities in my work. The same applies to collage using scissors and tearing as well as rubbing and covering with further marks.
Evelyn has used collage in some paintings to cover areas and make you look through to the background layer. In Hidden Scene (see fig. 19), the painting explores disruptions in communications, relationships, and perspectives, offering little resolution. The panels obscure the painting's totality, emphasizing that art isn't about providing answers but raising questions. Its gaps invite inquiry and engage the imagination, reflecting our instinct to fill voids for a sense of order, yet Hidden Scene remains stubbornly ambiguous. 7
Figure 19. Pam Evelyn, Hidden Scene, oil on linen, 3 panels, 321 x 117 cm each, 2022 © Pam Evelyn
For me first ideas were simply layering on different materials (see fig. 20), but this has led onto hiding the layers beneath and then reincorporating them (see figs. 21 and 22).
Figure 20. Sally Barron, cloud, Oil and tracing paper on cardboard, 2024.
Figure 21. detail
After Vuillard Collage and house paint on canvas
Figure 22. Sunshine, Sally Barron, 2024, oil and collage on canvas, 1650 x 1800 mm
Footnotes
1. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, trans. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (New York: Praeger, 1953), 16.
2. Amanda Preston, "Artful Deception, Languaging, and Learning—The Brain on Seeing Itself," Open Journal of Philosophy 5, no. 7 (November 2015): 343–350, https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2015.57049, accessed August 4, 2024.
3. Aimée Parrott, Waterborne, Parafin, May 26–July 15, 2023, accessed August 9, 2024, https://www.parafin.co.uk/artists/artists-aimee-parrott.
4. "Emma McIntyre: If Not, Winter," David Zwirner, accessed August 9, 2024, https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2024/emma-mcintyre-if-not-winter.
5. Pam Evelyn, interview by James Ambrose, Emergent, accessed August 9, 2024, https://www.emergentmag.com/interviews/pam-evelyn.
6. Evelyn, "Interview by James Ambrose," Emergent.
7. Pam Evelyn, “In Conversation with Pam Evelyn,” interview by LVH Art, LVH Art, accessed August 9, 2024, https://www.lvhart.co/journal/lvh-in-conversation-with-rising-star-pam-evelyn.
