How to draw something that isn't there by looking at all there is?
Patrick De Meyer
Mortsel, België
About
Patrick De Meyer, °1958, Antwerp, Belgium
As a student and later at university, the margins of my textbooks were filled with scribbles, dots, and interconnected forms. All these markings are communicative acts. They speak a language without boundaries between art and language. A language that is both personal and universally recognizable.
Project
My project consists of drawings on paper. I try not to draw something, but focus on the process. They are experiences in making traces, sensations and memories arising from perception.
It is not a passive registration, but an active, embodied and structured process that becomes visible in my sketches and drawings.
Do I hereby provide an answer to my question in the title? We are physically and physiologically limited in our perception. We cannot process all the information around us. What we do have control over is what we want to perceive. We determine the conditions of our perception ourselves.
This can be done by building knowledge about the concept of perception and its process. Knowing how visual perception works can help us to use the laws of perception and deal with them selectively. Knowing how the eye and brain work helps us, and the artist in particular, to understand why an image is considered aesthetic and balanced.
It should be clear that there is more to a sketch or drawing than a sheet with just marks.
