MARK FRY - INTO THE AIR

An Exhibition of recent drawings

The swift gesture that results in the drawing is the outcome of a long process. While I am working I try to move freely between different ideas, gradually finding my way into the rhythm of the drawing.

Sometimes I rehearse a gesture, rather like practising a difficult passage of music, so that I can begin and end the movement without hesitation. While this is going on, the surface begins to acquire an identity of its own from the residue of these attempts.

In the moment of movement I have to work fast enough to keep one step ahead of my conscious self. I'm trying to get into the gap just before my mind analyses what I am doing and anticipates what I am going to do next.

At some point, almost invariably in the split second when I am not quite looking, I make what I recognise as the right movement. I know that I have found the drawing. It was waiting to be discovered in an unsuspected place. Once the drawing has emerged, I will often go on working the surface, making a space for the line to live in.

Sometimes I like half of a drawing and I wipe off the other half and try to go on with it. It never works. Each drawing is a whole thing, it has to be done as a whole, like throwing a pot, you can't break it and remake a part of it. It's a single gesture, not an addition of parts.

Mark Fry

Normandy, June 2005