Memories of Mountains

For many years, drawing has been the core of my teaching and vital part of my own practice as a painter and for the last fifteen years, in sculpture. I am convinced of the importance of drawing in general education, as well as in the specialist experience for artists and designers and am concerned by the possibility of its further decline in curricula. Since leaving teaching at the Glasgow School of Art, I have continued to take every opportunity to practice, teach or talk about drawing in order to sustain and promote interest in it.

Whilst working in India, winter 2005, I made the first large-scale drawings primarily for exhibition purposes. These drawings were inspired by studying Classical Chinese landscape paintings at the British Museum and by a short visit to Beijing and Hefei shortly before going to India.

What interests me about Chinese paintings is the absolute equanimity between the importance of the marks and the bit of ‘reality’ they represent. In traditional painting there is a repertoire of marks for representing landscape and it is the individual eloquence with which the artist deploys these marks to construct the landscape image, that is a criteria for success. On sees this phenomenon in western drawings and prints (for example Van Gogh’s drawings), but without the consistency and sophistication of the Chinese; for the western artist, the image, rather than the means, has been of prime importance.

In India, I made three large horizontal charcoal drawings on paper fixed to sections of board, each drawing averaging a total length of 20 feet long by 2 feet high. They were inspired by landscape metaphors in the writings of Lao Tzu. I would like to propose to make, up to three large vertical drawings in the form of hanging scrolls, for installation in the RSA Galleries, provisionally titled, ‘ Memories of Mountains’.

I am interested in the opportunity to draw and exhibit on a scale I have not yet been able to try. To produce and installation with an economy of means but which would respond to the scale of the walls and monumentality of the neo-classical design of the RSA Galleries (albeit from a different Classical tradition), and to produce drawings of a high technical quality, with a subtlety of surface, but also with the utmost simplicity.

These drawings would be resourced from memory and through imagination. They would be monochrome black charcoal on rolls of white cartridge paper and approx. 150cms wide 600cms high (5feet wide – 20 feet high), or whatever fits appropriately the gallery wall height, and hung with fixings approved by the RSA. (Total wall length required for three drawings – min 21 feet).

Giving due consideration to health and safety issues of artist and public, and the need to maintain the high standard of cleanliness in the RSA Galleries, I suggest the possibility of making one of the drawings on-site, perhaps over approx. one week. This event would enable some interaction and dialogue between artist and the interested public about the issues of drawing in relation to art production and in education.

Peter Bevan 2007