Drawing faces

When drawing a face, any face, it is as if curtain after curtain, mask after mask, falls away…until a final mask remains, one that can no longer be removed, reduced….The eye does not judge, moralize , criticize. It accepts the masks in gratitude...

Frederick Franck, 'The Zen of Seeing - Seeing/drawing as meditation'

Pat, 2001, pencil, approx 60 x 40 cm

Peter, 1994, pencil , approx 21 x 15 cm

Gardener at Arcadia, 1998,

wax pencil, approx 40 x 30 cm

Figures on Cloth (1998-2001)

I would like to introduce 'Figures on Cloth' with the observations made on two of the works by Doug Coates, former IT consultant and architect and the guest-of-honour at my exhibition 'The Language of Feeling' in 2001, Melbourne.

In the paint and fabric collages, a particular point that interests me is the use of pattern in the reversal of figure and ground – where the figure is a patterned fabric shape set into a plainer ground, sometimes with drawn figures in silhouette or lightly sketched in. It produces a floating effect that is sometimes ghostly.

Batik man on cloth 01, 1998
Fabric, stitching and colour pencil , 35 x 25 cm

Figure on cloth 02, 1998
Mixed media, 35 x 25 cm

Worried man 03 , 2001
Mixed media, approx 28 x 20 cm

Worried man 04, 2001

Mixed media, approx 28 x 20 cm

Worried man 01, 2001

Mixed media on fabric, approx 28 x 20 cm