Palimpsests–Transparent Strata: Pencil drawings on Mylar

The Palimpsests, pencil drawings on Mylar, derive from the manipulation of lines or smears of lead in a formative interaction with one of the Primitives. While intuitively engaged in an additive and subtractive process, the image reveals itself, celebrating the parts and the process of its own genesis while retaining the history of the shadow. Transparency establishes a synergistic perception of different spatial planes in a complex palimpsest drawn of shadow with the capacity to construct form as the focus of the eye moves nearby and far off to reveal an “intimate immensity,” as Bachelard terms it.

We do not have to be long in the woods to experience the always rather anxious impression of “going deeper and deeper” into a limitless world. Soon, if we do not know where we are going, we no longer know where we are...

Quoted from Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

When doing my shadow drawings, as my hand draws the layered shadows with a 4B pencil, it smears the lead onto the Mylar surface. Layers come and go into focus as the planes in the palimpsest collude to initiate new fields and focal points. The focus of the eye moves nearby then far off as it scans the visual field.

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Ink Primitives

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