How I use my sketchbook to find the content of my thoughts

Sketchbook as a portal. This is how my mind gets going sometimes…I’m not sure how much control I have over it, but it’s a way of using a sketchbook to find stuff going on in this head ….

CLARE WASSERMANN

9 FEB 2024

These are the images for this particular stream of consciousness sketchbook. They are copies of a long series of paintings I made on the sea wall in blustery North Wales through which I embody the storm. This is a section in my PhD research which I have really enjoyed documenting. I find that I don’t really have too much control over what I am writing – I leave it to come through me in a way akin to the notion of ‘enchantment’ spoken about by activist and leader Nina Simons. She advocates taking a solitary walk and seeing what comes through you as a form of contemplative practice. Here I paste images made by myself and then open myself up to what writing is there…it’s an experience I enjoy, it’s immersive. It’s part of sadhana a practice in jñāna yoga.

Here are some pages:

This I call the questioning of abstract ideas through the vehicle of images. I am questioning here the nature of reality. Have you ever thought about that?

I like these two quotes by Margaret Davidson on contemporary drawing:

When you look more closely you see beyond the images and into the variations of those internal ideas. 

Davidson 2011: 174

and

Consciousness in drawing is one of those states of mind that, once you reach it, you can’t imagine the time before reaching it. Once you know it, you can’t return to not knowing it. When you become conscious and intentional, you cross over from some realm of ignorance to true awareness.

Davidson 2011:178

Ref: Davidson, Margaret (2011), Contemporary drawing: key concepts and techniques, New York: Random House.

She’s spot on as far as I’m concerned.

This week in the studio I am working particularly on this painting – by next week’s newsletter it will be done. It’s one of three that have occupied me during January and February – they are towards a solo exhibition in August in Much Wenlock, Shropshire UK. Which reminds me I must get cracking on that work…speed up a bit!

83 x 59cm – work in progress but nearly there!

That’s all for this week!

but …

I’d love to know if :

you write much in your sketchbooks if you have them?

you do free writing or a stream of consciousness

you have worked with Julia Cameron’s morning pages concept

have tried asemic writing?