Paul Bloomer is a contemporary British artist living and working in the Shetland Islands.
Drawing is central to my art. I draw on many different levels each with a different emphasis but ultimately the same thing. My drawing practise includes sketchbooks, life studies, imaginative drawing and large scale finished drawings as well as the drawing that forms the essential structure of every piece of art I have ever made.
I regard the use of sketchbooks to be an essential working tool. My sketchbooks are a living breathing part of my artistic development and have been responsible for more finished pieces and breakthroughs in my art than I care to remember. A sketchbook is one area where an artist can be truly free to record and document intimate, personal and usually private ideas. These ideas can often point the artist in significant directions.
I favour small pocket sized books that can be taken everywhere with ease and usually draw with a pressure sensitive black pen that gives a wide variety of line. The contents of these books have no boundaries and are rarely seen by anyone. The imagery contained within often takes years to surface and mature into finished pieces.
Watch this site for future exhibitions of pages from my sketchbook and how they have influenced some of my major works and direction changes.
Drawings
are usually perceived as somehow inferior to paintings, but I believe this
is principally because of market demands. I have always produced large-scale
highly finished drawings and consider them to be every bit the equal to painting.
Some of these drawings have been based on specific ideas but the best of them were driven into shape by an intense inner need. They begin by drawing abstract shapes in charcoal and with intense effort they evolve into complex and tightly composed narratives over a period of time.
I consider my woodcuts to be drawings because every one of them began with a charcoal drawing drawn directly on to the block. These drawings take days, months or years to evolve and I do not begin cutting until every square inch of the block is working to its best advantage in a harmonious composite whole.
Click here to read more about how I see my woodcuts and etchings as an artist.
The term life drawing is traditionally associated with the figure but for me it encompasses the whole visual arena of life. I draw from life to expand my visual vocabulary and keep my hand, eye and mind in peak artistic condition. Drawing is a bit like physical exercise in that you have to keep doing it to stay fit.
I favour charcoal on heavy paper for most of my drawing. Charcoal is an extremely direct yet absolutely flexible medium enabling large areas of tone to be built up quickly and erased just as quickly. To charcoal I would add various compressed charcoals, charcoal pencils and hard and soft erasers to get a full tonal range and wide variety of mark. The eraser is as essential to me as a mark making tool as the charcoal itself.
Drawing from life forces us to look with an intense gaze and it is through this intense gaze that an artist learns new shapes, colours and compositional arrangements. This constant enrichment of visual vocabulary keeps an artists mind fresh and avoids the temptation to slip into easy formularisation.
I consider this form of drawing an extension of my sketchbooks serving the same function of recording and analysing the world, but where my small sketch books are private I have no qualms in exhibiting these drawings as finished works in their own right. Sometimes before I paint I do two or three drawings just to loosen up.
Drawing from life alone gives a rather limited vision of the world because it does not take into account the complex internal world of the human mind. Within each of us is a treasure trove of imagery that when unlocked can give powerful insights into the human condition.
The process of drawing from life and imagination go hand in hand, both disciplines informing and enriching the other. Drawings dredged from an inner vision are occasionally beyond immediate comprehension, yet with time their meanings are revealed. They make sense only when seen in the context of its time. This affirms my trust in the intrinsic power of instinct and emotion as a powerful creative force over and above intellectual rationalisation. My search for meaning in the work usually comes after I have created it not when I am creating it. The work is easier to understand when seen in the context of its time, thus my working method is to have lots of things on the go at the same time all in different stages of completion. Occasionally I have to wait years to understand enough about a picture to continue working on it.
