Tag Archives: repetition

What it’s all about

Mystery Evolves (detail) - ink drawing by David Smith
Mystery Evolves (detail)
Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm

In my earlier post today I mentioned my abiding interest the interplay between order and chaos and how a stream of my work is made up of many repetitive actions interrupted and disturbed by random chaotic influences. This piece, Mystery Evolves, which I completed a few days ago, is an example of just such a “field” drawing.  And while this piece will not be exhibited in my #Letter365 show at Bridport Arts Centre it is relevant to both the project and the installation. The year-long project has been a repetitive action – the daily creation of an artwork and its dispatch to the Arts Centre – which has been affected by unruly elements sometimes beyond my control. The installation will be an ordered arrangement of the envelopes interrupted by the opening and display of the contents – and who knows what else.

I will be exhibiting some of field drawings and tidelines pieces with the #Letter365 pieces to help place it into a broader context of my current work.

Mystery Evolves (detail) - ink drawing by David Smith
Mystery Evolves (detail)
Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm
Mystery Evolves (detail) - ink drawing by David Smith
Mystery Evolves (detail)
Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm
Mystery Evolves - ink drawing by David Smith
Mystery Evolves
Ink on Somerset paper 559mm × 762mm

Repetition is at the heart of Nature

#Letter365 No238 goes in the box
No238 goes in the box

If anyone has been following this blog, they would notice a similarity in each day’s image. Most days there is a snap of my hand holding the day’s artwork encased in its envelope poised at the edge of a postbox’s aperture. I have a collection of many hundreds of such images (I take usually multiple shots in case I mess up in some way). I like the regularity of it. This regular, repetitive process, the same but with individual variables, is at the heart of most of the work I create. It is also at the heart of what Nature creates: my favourite being the ripples on beach sand. At this time of year we notice the leaves on the trees turning and falling. Millions of the same thing but everyone unique. Starlings murmurating. Wildebeest migrating. Crowds of human beings. The structure of crystals. So many things we find beautiful because of repetition given texture by individuality.