Dreams awoken
I’ve filled up quite a few sketchbooks lying in bed in the evenings. I draw for between thirty and ninety minutes before going to sleep almost every night. Nearly all the drawings in this book were done under the same conditions. They were always drawn in one go, without prior penciling, be it with or without a specific plan.
I work on four formats ranging from A6 to A3 with a pilot V5, which is a pen hard enough to be incisive but fine enough to do subtle crosshatching.
The drawings are sometimes directly related to my daytime work, taking a figurative-narrative form or reflecting the emotion of the moment through an exploration of abstract expression. This moment of creativity has its virtues. Firstly, I enjoy the chance to feed my desire to keep on drawing. It is also a moment that lets me transform negative energy (stress, anxiety, frustration) into something tangible. Thus, when I get emotional, I can “turn the page” more easily and move on.
These notebooks are also a sort of spiritual journey for me. It is like meditation. I get lost in the shapes, lines and small details, particularly as I am often in a lethargic state; on the verge of falling asleep. My eyes, the architects of my drawings, fill with sand and slowly close. I then experiment drawing bits with my eyes shut. The intention remains the same, but without my eyes the results are more brutal.
I rarely come back to my drawings. I might refine some curves or outlines or crosshatch some elements to lift them from the page. I like keeping my first attempts. I don’t try to “finish” my drawings. They have a life and a story and translate a specific moment in time. There are recurring themes, you might even say obsessions. You could categorize them into six broad themes. This book is therefore made up of six chapters. The boundaries between the themes are thin and I’ve enjoyed mixing some of them up.
Practicing this form of automatic writing has liberated me creatively. Attached to realistic drawing for many years, I didn’t let myself play about and got way too serious. One day I heard Moebius say that a drawing was never wrong, that you just had to do something else. Since that day I’ve been experimenting every day without constraint, waiting for something to happen. I’ve become a front row spectator of happy chance, convinced that anything is possible. Every night I dream about what I will draw the next day.
Jaouen