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The other night I had a long discussion with an artist friend of mine about drawing, which got started thanks to my ceaseless weeping over technical difficulties. I had spent a whole day figuring out a way to represent cellulite on a woman’s legs. I had tried all possible techniques from line to shading, but they were all unsuccessful. Then, I thought that perhaps I wasn’t concentrated enough or maybe it was some flaw in my drawing education that I had to unravel. My friend didn’t hesitate to reply to my laments. He gazed at me and said, “Fernanda if you find it so difficult why don’t you try to make a freestyle drawing, something more natural for you?” |
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The Orange Peel Syndrome – Fernanda Chieco
The other night I had a long discussion with an artist friend of mine about drawing, which got started thanks to my ceaseless weeping over technical difficulties. I had spent a whole day figuring out a way to represent cellulite on a woman’s legs. I had tried all possible techniques from line to shading, but they were all unsuccessful. Then, I thought that perhaps I wasn’t concentrated enough or maybe it was some flaw in my drawing education that I had to unravel.
My friend didn’t hesitate to reply to my laments. He gazed at me and said, “Fernanda if you find it so difficult why don’t you try to make a freestyle drawing, something more natural for you?”
That sounded like quite the obvious answer, but it only make me rethink all the time I usually spend on one drawing and all the research I have to go through in order to get something onto the threatening blank paper’s surface.
Paper itself is, for me, an exquisite object of desire. How can one amalgamation of fibers, harmonically intertwined and held together by some sort of bonding product, have the power of documenting one moment in time? This is my investigation and also one of the main issues of my research: the relationship we have with all the information we gather from the documents that we heritage (preserve, conserve, collect) and learn from.
People have made drawings since prehistoric times. I am mainly interested in the exploratory process that the drawing precincts, with great emphasis on observation and creating ways for representing the ideas in the most objective way.
Resembling some layouts of old manuscripts, I write stories or statements using drawings instead of alphabets. Human figures are represented in line drawings and are also placed in situations where their actions, together, create an effect greater than that of each individual agent. In this way, the final drawing always represents one system, structurally composed by human synergy.
In my work, the human body is a closed organic system that provides all necessary functions that the environment makes it require. As an example, in the series “Le Banquet,” both men and women are well placed inside of a Victorian toilet, where they establish connections between each other by using their bodies for both producing and consuming the sophisticated buffet.
My most recent series “ANGELVS DOMINI,” was based on an experience I had while living in Dublin during my artist’s residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I created a series of six drawings in which I placed 12 people inside of each of them. The drawing represents the moment of the Angelus—where they all stop their activity to contemplate the existence. In each image, both men and women are fully engaged in one activity, as described in the titles: watching the badger, smoking the salmon, catching fleas from the deer, licking woodcocks, spreading jam on the seal and shaving the hare. Their bodies may be frozen in time through their stillness on the paper, but their eyes gaze at us, as if turning the subject matter towards the observer.
Going back to the discussion with my friend, after briefly contemplating my well-structured systems, I concluded that I don’t think I will ever understand drawing as it relates to freedom. If the paper has the power to confine anything that touches its surface and leaves a mark, all I can do is to keep using it as my tool. I think the freedom remains in the observation field instead. The more I observe things, the more I accumulate a visual vocabulary, and I think that such a process allows me to reorganize the systems already established and thus to create new statements based on their own rules. I don’t think I can change over to a freestyle form of drawing, for my drawings have to be extremely precise in representing ideas instead of moods or perceptions. I’d say that my main problem lurks in the constant search for sources of inspiration in order to create novel combinations and novel applications of familiar devices.
Having that stated, I now head back to the drawings, enjoying my cellulites struggle. It’s all a question of combining lines and shades to create the orange-peel look that woman hate.
