A Discovery: Part 4

When I am using frottage as a way of working, I find that a peculiar, intuitive spatial depth occurs. Even though I have carefully controlled the placement of textures, the final outcome is filled with unintended and random imagery. Recognizable images, like fish, animals and people, for example, may appear between and around the intended imagery. Even rubbed areas that were unintentionally embossed by the wooden edge of my pencil, reappear when other patternings are rubbed over them. These surprises and patterned layerings float and intermingle, materialize and disintegrate, throughout the drawing surface. When I use profiles of life-size people, they suggest the iconic representations seen in postage stamps, coins and in the profile paintings of ancient Egypt. I feel that the partial essence that remains of a rubbed object, forms a kind of memorial or commemorative of the actual object. Perhaps references to the ancients, archeology and anthropology can also be inferred. What I see are the textures immersing the images in an "electrified forest", carrying with them a spinning, illusory momentum that skids and careens across the surface of the picture plane.
Here is the detail from the drawing "Russian Bowls" as promised from my last blog: