Starting to do some drawing this week based on this last month's travels here in Bolivia. Going back to my drawn-diary approach to responding to journeying, I've been taking a more planned approach and have been using reference images to create the drawings.
This drawing 'Oruro 20-09-2013' was made in response to my single day and night in the town, where the thing that struck me most strongly was how intertwined Catholicism and pre-colonial religion was, so the overall image is a mixture Oruro's Virgin statue with the carnival diablo masks. (At Dan Moriarty's talk here at the SB house last night I learned that this intertwining is the result of Catholicism having been assimilated into the Andean cosmovision, which is a world-view rather than a religion, a way of understanding the world.)
The baby Jesus she holds is modelled on a statue commemorating miners, and all the little events and observations of my time in the town are 'woven' into the detail of her skirts, referencing the iconography of weaving (though here there is more detail and the line is less squared than in weaving).
The colours and iconography in the corners of the drawing are taken from the reference image in the photo above left, a weaving from the Qaqachaga community in Oruro, found at the Museo de Textiles Andinos Bolivianos in La Paz.
This is a bit of a warm-up drawing (maybe in being more deliberate it's a bit stiff?!) but the positive is that its the first step along the way to exploring narrative through drawn 'weaves' and, even better, it's led to the invitation to participate in an experimental art night Fåglarna this Saturday at Groove Bar and Club here in Cochabamba, organised by the lovely Olivia Barrón.. wicked!
(so now to get off the computer and get back to the studio and some intense drawing sessions!)
:-)
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