-Victor Knoe
Careless, 2015
This drawing all started with a yellow acrylic painting on watercolor paper made by my 22-month-old daughter. I got inspired by the painting and decided to make a little drawing on it. I didn’t intend on any specific subject matter. I just let the shapes come together until they spoke to me.
This may sound like an automatic drawing of sorts. Automatic drawing is a method which was mostly defined during the Surrealist period of the early to mid-twentieth century. The idea is to make marks on paper without thinking. Some like to keep their work chaotic and irrational while others tend to develop the images suggested to them by the erratically-made markings.
I often used this method when I was younger but I tend to think of it a bit differently nowadays. I no longer like the idea of not thinking through any portion or process of an artwork. My aim is to immerse every work with as much thinking as I possibly can. Interestingly, that does not mean that I refrain from erratic or chaotic mark-making. I just like to decide when and where to do it, by way of thinking.
The same philosophy was applied to this little drawing on top of my daughter’s painting. I drew the human figure as if he was daydreaming. He seems to notice the odd-looking creature perched on him but he is really just staring off into space. His thoughts are attracting the harmful creature to him because it is feeding on them and simultaneously encouraging the process. The creature positions itself in a fashion as if it is squeezing the thoughts out of the human.
The creature represents destructive spiritual forces that bear ill will towards humanity. They are allowed access into our being by our erroneous deeds and find a way to keep developing the thought processes that encourage the repetition of those errors or the desire to experiment with greater wrongs.
In other words, the human figure represents ignorance and carelessness in thinking. We all bear the inner tendency towards error, but victory can only be achieved with right knowledge.
I often used this method when I was younger but I tend to think of it a bit differently nowadays. I no longer like the idea of not thinking through any portion or process of an artwork. My aim is to immerse every work with as much thinking as I possibly can. Interestingly, that does not mean that I refrain from erratic or chaotic mark-making. I just like to decide when and where to do it, by way of thinking.
The same philosophy was applied to this little drawing on top of my daughter’s painting. I drew the human figure as if he was daydreaming. He seems to notice the odd-looking creature perched on him but he is really just staring off into space. His thoughts are attracting the harmful creature to him because it is feeding on them and simultaneously encouraging the process. The creature positions itself in a fashion as if it is squeezing the thoughts out of the human.
The creature represents destructive spiritual forces that bear ill will towards humanity. They are allowed access into our being by our erroneous deeds and find a way to keep developing the thought processes that encourage the repetition of those errors or the desire to experiment with greater wrongs.
In other words, the human figure represents ignorance and carelessness in thinking. We all bear the inner tendency towards error, but victory can only be achieved with right knowledge.
"For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
Corinthians II 10:3-5
Corinthians II 10:3-5
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