Emergent Series
Patio Lights, Morning by Rami Schandall. April 2020, pen on paper.
Through the month of April and into May, I have been drawing or painting almost every single day. Art-making is one of my responses to the upheaval and destabilization of the pandemic, staying grounded by observing what is, tangibly, going on around me. It helps to have a group of artist friends, egging each other on.
Patio Lights, Night by Rami Schandall, April 2020.
In 2014, I took a powerful class at the Toronto School of Art with Megan Williams. The topic was “developing series” and the medium was drawing, which I was alienated from. In fact, I was alienated from art in general — I had strong visual ideas surfacing in my head, rattling around with no idea how to get out. I was stuck.
Neighbours at Night, Rami Schandall. April 2020.
Megan’s brilliant course provided eight weeks of exploration through a wide range of practices: quick observational drawings, noticing what we notice; walking randomly for an hour, drawing impressionistically from what we perceived on our walk; memory drawing from early childhood; energy drawings, from emotion; drawing with a timer, 5 minute drawings, 2 minute drawings, 60 x 1 minute drawings. Every week, we showed each other our work, we watched for where the work went stale and where it got charged with energy. We observed patterns emerge in our choices. Heard ourselves belittle our own work, while others saw beauty. Every week, someone had a breakthrough and someone else fought against the week’s exercise. Favourite techniques began to emerge for each of us. Ways forward began to appear. I made friends with drawing, using thick, messy, chalk pastel and big gestures, and the inspirations that had been jammed began working their way free.
Night Car, Rami Schandall, April 2020.
In the last four weeks of the class, we chose a theme or subject or method that had emerged out of the first eight, and explored strategies for developing those into a series. In a follow-up course, a group of us took these strategies toward fully executing our projects. We articulated, planned, and developed our ideas, and set about creative problem-solving together. For each artist, we spent a day collectively brainstorming and workshopping — and PLAYING — with their project. Amazing ideas came from all directions. My 1000-day photo-series, #skyproject, evolved significantly through this process. (The full expression has yet to materialize…just you wait…)
Window and Sill, Rami Schandall, April 2020.
Kate Bishop, Joni Moriyama, Liz Gillespie, and I, still met every 6 weeks or so in the old world, and now, mid-pandemic, we connect every week on Zoom. We defined weekly parameters, loosely following the first weeks in Megan’s class. We began with observational drawings constrained by social distancing: we drew scenes we noticed outside, from inside our windows. Next we moved to closup views of things outside the window, or the window itself. I found myself drawn to night scenes, the ordinary view from my windows charged with mysterious light. Satisfying also to almost completely fill the page with inky blackness.
Next we worked with impressions gathered from walks outside. We all have tried working in different mediums, over the weeks. I began with brush-tipped felt pens, and moved to watercolour for impressions of my empty neighbourhood, still waking up to spring. Kate and Joni have explored digital paintings, pen and ink drawings, watercolour and acrylic paintings.
Spring Streetscape, Rami Schandall, April 2020.
I have posted many of my unpolished drawings and paintings on instagram, enjoying the instant gratification of “likes” from friends and strangers. It feels good to observe these times through art, and to be unprecious about sharing it.
Since the fourth week we have been moving in very different directions from each other, as our series and projects emerge. Joni is digitally painting an urban intersection and its changing lights, moving toward abstraction. Kate is focused on the anthropomorphic form of an apple tree outside her window, in acrylic glazes and a representational style. I am developing a visual language for sensation (propreoception): non-verbal, non-narrative, in abstract but recognizable human figures, in a bright watercolour palette. I’ll share some of the fruit of that series in the next post.
Emergent Spring, Rami Schandall, May 2020.
