Works of Art
An Introduction to Sinuous Art
I discovered the art of drawing in 1996. Ever since that discovery, I have had an ever growing craving for drawing.
I believe that my body is leading me more than anything. I never “depict” a figure solely with my thoughts. Drawing is neither matter alone nor mind alone but something running through both regions.
The lines, brushes, the ink, pastel colors evoke a bodily – almost sexual – sensation. It runs through my spine, insistingly, forces its way through my body out into a gracefully sinuous trail or path.
The whiteness of the paper never intimidates me. The blank, empty “void” is like a drum beat that initiates a rhythm in me for my body and mind to co-exist in the “act” itself, wholly wild, courageously, bodily. The body is the best thing to fill an empty void.
This phenomenon is eloquently described in modern philosophy. An example is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who writing in the 20th century said:
There is, therefore, another subject beneath me, for whom a world exists before I am here, and who marks out my place in it. This captive or natural subject is my body. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception)
This quote brings us to the crux of the matter: being in this world means being bodily in place. It is by my body – my lived body – that I am here. Not by any thoughts of the “fact”- but solely by my body.
It is precisely the embodiment that gives us thoughts. Indeed:
“If someone says, “I have a body”, he can be asked, “Who is speaking here with this mouth?” (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, §244)
Or more exactly, each is a region of “flesh” prior to any cognitive attitudes.
Think about a toddler: he/she does not learn how to walk by the means of cognitive attitudes, but merely my bodily skills. Human beings first and foremost “do” things; “knowing” is always a posteriori.
