An interesting essay about the conflict between the illogical nature of abstract art and the clearly defined container that is a sketchbook.
I can’t, I confess, do any of this: I find that I am, in fact, an abstract painter. And it is this fundamentally experimental vocabulary — unruly and unplanned and gestural — that characterizes the work I not only can but want to make. What’s key in this equation is the process: assuming that all sketchbooks are meant to be a clearinghouse of subconscious thought, why is it that so many of us use our sketchbooks to annihilate that which lacks clarity, so that we can set the random thinking aside and consequently, produce more resolved work on the other end? On the other hand, if you think of your sketchbook as the end goal, what then? What if you start drawing with no idea about what you want to draw? What if your relationship with the pencil and the page is the whole point?
