Speculatio through Drawing

Crossing the Line: Drawing in the Middle East 2 12th–14th September 2014, American University in Dubai, UAE

“SPECULATIO THROUGH DRAWING”

Venantius J Pinto 664 West 163 St #57New York, NY 10032-4527, [email protected]/photos/venantius/sets

Abstract

Drawing allows me to reflect on ideas and phenomena that pass

across/within my senses which lend themselves to deep introspection

about concerns situated at the intersection and layering of religion,

sexuality, and consciousness. “Layering” is a metaphor for encapsulating

fragments and wholes that convey, power, compassion, and the memory of

time & culture.

Through drawing, I attempt to achieve organic marks which reveal

emotions underlying our thoughts and ideas – a receiving. Through

speculatio (contemplative reflection) I enter spaces to bring out and

comprehend natures within my being – to which I would otherwise not be

privy.

My drawings are an attempt at wholeness; an orison – towards assigning

marks and generating form to the formless, often within extreme

abstraction; employing a broad range of media and approaches, some

learnt through an ongoing practice of Shodō 書書. My more recent works fall

within the following areas: Obmutescent Torture-scapes (a book of thirty

drawings on torture); works on the theme We do not come by our Thoughts; They

come to us; drawing letterforms and other subjects, while glimpsing, 1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/venantius/sets

mailto:[email protected]


gleaning and assigning meaning to works in the manner approached and

through the act and dynamic of drawing.

Knowing, comes from an innate desire to flesh out thought through

drawing, where the mind works with "memories" harnessing the body and

its dynamics, as one lays down marks accordingly – from seeing the way

in which the thought reveals itself, or how one reflects upon it:

modulating the information as it gets constructed or presents itself. I

draw from ideas – with some concreteness as in a fictional character

constructed by a writer/poet perhaps from accumulated experiential

angst; or with more diaphanous notions as in the epiphanic, the

euphonious; or by seeing possibilities for expressing ineffabilities –

following the stirrings that one cannot place, yet are real and

palpable...knowing has begun. The realization is a drawing.

The concreteness of working with time, the attempt to represent it

visually, is two-fold. One is embracing the thought to the best of one’s

ability – this being towards a visual manifestation. The other is

conveying glimpses of time in one piece – but without freezing a moment.

Spatiality, temporality, looking at appearances, drawing from those

perceptions what appears reliable, while weaving such consciousness into

my experience, is my drawing practice.

Approaching Drawing: Speculatio through Drawing

In this essay I will attempt to convey how my drawings come about: via

the various conduits which inform and affirm my practice, the

constructing of narratology from shared emotions and sensory details,

cause and effect, exploration of my natures, the necessity to

contemplate what thoughts and events hold for us, and how we may

correspond with/through them. Such exploration via ardent drawing is a

speculatio; a contemplative space and a formal path in my drawing practice.2


Etymologically, speculatio derived from Late Latin speculationem, “close

observation, rapt attention,” is about the “pursuit of truth by means

of thinking” (Online Etymology Dictionary 2001-2014). It essentially

implies reflection in contemplative rigor and giving honest

consideration to an event encountered, as it the traverses one’s senses.

The gains of which: emotional strength, volitional strength, relational

acuity can be shared with those in one’s ambit and reach, as with

responsive persons through one’s lived aesthetic, and in drawing; as

resonates with John Berger (1969, p 104): As a result of recognizing

contradiction, one discovers unexpected correspondences between apparent

opposites.

Drawing in this regard is the holding of thought, its centrality being

the sensing of possibility and taking action – engaging to realize the

potentiality in ideas, and translating it via touch and pressure onto a

support. “Thoughts have their own trajectories, slopes and energies.

Through our ideas we are propelled, compelled or impelled towards, or

away from, various phenomenological encounters” (Pinto 2007, p 15). To

reflect means one has gone beyond the gaze and is beyond the threshold

of sensorial awareness. We are observing: assessing, weighing, receiving

rationally and intellectually. If our experiences are not ours and ours

alone, then surely the experiencing – the consciousness generated via

the sensation experienced – certainly is in any given encounter.

Drawing is a practice – a way, where the line as gesture is the central

expressive device, coalescing with the inspiration to spend time with an

event to myriadly emote memory and thought. My artistic labor is within

the framework of trying to comprehend ideas situated at the intersection

of religion, sexuality and consciousness. Many of my titles certainly

have their origin in ideas that encompass these three areas.3


For my show Evaporated Meanings, in an essay titled Drawing is Seeing, Fennell

(2009) wrote:

[Pinto’s] abstract drawings are highly gestural, the marks almost frenetic, but they are contained within calm compositions, and their sensitivity of touch gives them an ethereal quality, as if the energy is highly refined. Such distinctive mark-making language only evolves over years of sustained practice within this field of consciousness. In thisregard his work is created within quietude where a state of calmness and collectedness is essential to realize drawing.

What is Drawing?: Towards Wholeness

Drawing through the agency of line is a vehicle to express emotion:

implied or explicit, however subtle/fleeting the sensation received from

the subject, which gets formulated into consciousness upon

contemplation. The outpouring consciousness from the experience seeks

expression in its own way, through marks: uneven, thick, thin, curved,

jagged, rolling, reluctant or swift lines articulating a particular

emotion where the line makes the layers of emotion whole. The experience

is memorized as real and the drawing surface harmonizes into a whole; in

unity with one’s reality.

To engage with thoughts, and those of othersa larger consciousness. Sympathetic space.The why of things, occurrences, stirrings, evocations, the space between one's legs, a visage, the tilt of a head,Spaces that certain people simply seem to inhabit.

Attempts at wholeness begin with fragmentary relationships towards

achieving integrity and unity, to give form to ideas that may not have

physical form; are formless and where the marks in themselves are the

form as well as shape of content. Abstractions are distillations – a

hiding to reveal more, a penetrating to convey the overarching concept –

to emote various vantages through layering composition, scale, and the

traverse of inspiration as newer sensations arise.

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I knock at the stone’s front door. ”Its only me, let me come in. I hear you have great empty halls inside you, unseen, their beauty in vain, soundless, not echoing anyone’s steps. Admit you don’t know them well yourself.”

(Szymborska 1997, p 55)

In extreme abstraction implied signifiers are practically blurred, as

if the viewer would have to mull strenuously, “could this be a pair of

eyes or could that be a battered mouth?” Suggestions may be made through

all manners of what appear to be edges, adumbrating coronas, textural

surfaces implying bastions, ramparts, hindrances, refuges, and so forth.

The range of media depending on the piece is either sparse as in

ballpoint/biro for Vicissitudes of Exile, to pigment/ink/milk as in Ekaksana.

One’s range of marks multiply, and over time one realizes a personal

vocabulary of mark-making evolving. The act of making marks/applying

color/layering is both conscious and unconscious; consciousness waxes

and wanes according to the datum or content received and according to

the manner and depth at which one’s mind engages with the subject.

Further variables include vigor, motivation, and certainly the various

logics one embraces. Edith Stein’s 1922 Causality and Pure Experiences (trans.

Basehart & Sawicki 2000, p 16) helps distinguish every experience as:

1. a content that is picked up into consciousness (for example a colordatum or an enjoyment);

2. The experience of that content, its becoming picked up into consciousness (the having of the sensation, the feeling of enjoyment);

3. the consciousness of that experiencing, which always accompanies it – in a higher or lower degree – and for whose sake the experiencing itself is even designated as consciousness.

Drawing memorializes content. It compartmentalizes or ritualizes the

experience, and celebrates one’s awareness of relationship-making.

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Marks and Meaning towards Drawing

Much as we attempt to assign meaning and motive to our drawing

endeavors, from deep-seated wills or upon deep immersions, the artist

makes every attempt to remember, memorize or erase according to the

degree of being impacted/touched by causality, sensations and

consciousness from both the outside (influences) as well as from within

(reflections). I do not know why we use the kind and range of marks we

do when engulfed with creating, but will attempt to give a sense of the

nature – the organic temper of my marks, their apparent source, and

perhaps the fountain or genesis of newer approaches. Our existence, our

time is deployed in living, making and enhancing relationships; perhaps

making meanings of happenings.

For most of us drawing is a significant arm/armature of our thinking,

the aspect of observation which requires tremendous energy to convert

into marks underlying emotions of our thoughts and ideas.

The organicity I seek to make through my marks are representative of

time and dissipation – traces of evaporated meanings, aspects that

modernity has given newer meanings to: rock surfaces, edges, all manners

of erosions; sand, decay, even death, as also marks made by humans over

millennia on various surfaces including a curiosity with cave art from

Bhimbetka, India. It is the interaction or cross fertilization of the

marks with various attributes, that are in a sense classical which

reveal the underlying emotions of our thoughts and ideas – a receiving,

the result of reflection, of penetrating beyond a veil that eludes or

complicates comprehension.

To convey any phenomena/subject/content, an attempt and/or ability to

impart essences comes into play – essentially creating characteristics 6


of sentiment, refining feelings of grief, of feeling forsaken, possibly

being content. To gain the consciousness in question – the subject must

be penetrated. This attempt to unearth and engage involves both; the

artist and thereafter the viewer – although the experience of the viewer

may differ.

My mark-making vocabulary is broad and within it the ones regarded as

organic have a greater premium as I regard with more affection. Organic

refers to character or savor, used to represent properties of content –

to suggest or have qualities associated with having some form of breath,

or the contrary (unnature). These movements, small (flicks) or large

(slashes), must coordinate, agglomerate and accrete into an entity as

opposed to something mechanistic: organic marks that suggest an

underlying presence akin to a subtext as in a deeper layering, an

unveiling to arrive at a reading that points toward mortality; marks

whose geometries are more indeterminate but capable of conveying

elemental traces of existence as opposed to the obvious.

I attempt to have the mark walk the thought by giving it expression and

environment: the meandrous, the implied, lines of vagrancy, pious lines,

strained ones, those of undulating thickness, a line that curves

creating disjuncts, curves that have multiple tangents, or display a

staccato temperament, and enter spaces of emotive containment to which I

otherwise would not be privy, to bring out natures within my being, and

comprehend through speculatio – contemplative reflection. I also believe

that one must be willing to change approaches to drawing when newer

content is encountered or reveals itself upon analysis and

contemplation. In this regard although my work is not about color

relationships – the color conveys references I would not encounter if

the piece was strictly monochromatic.

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Scripts as a source of or a path towards Pure Drawing—Motivations and

Impressions

My engagement with drawing scripts as pure drawing had two starts – one

a visual déjà vu in India and the other with events of the first Gulf

War. My first close encounter with the Tamil script was in 2002 on a

visit to Tamilnadu, India. The script in its myriad manifestations

intrigued me and although I had no understanding of it whatsoever I

seemed to relate to it. Its curvilinear quality had an arboreal feel,

and I thought about rendering it purely for the inherent quality of its

line and form – but to treat each letter differently, and yet have them

be a part of a complex identity system – the complete Tamil alphabet.

Middle Eastern scripts (from the very ancient to the contemporary

scripts) surfaced as an inspirational strand in my drawing practice,

with the onset of the first Gulf War in 1991; and began taking shape

during the Iraq War from 2003 along with concurrent media reports about

shaping public opinion. What occurred to me was that while on the one

hand war appeared imminent – we were being reminded about the region

being the cradle of civilization. I attempted to find commonalities

within this babel of opinions and was reminded of the abjads – consonants

of these alphabets. The signifiers range from forming figure-ground

relationships to developing layered constructs that look at unique

details of the social, historical, and environmental aspects where the

script was developed and used.

Aside from the sheer naked insolence of opinion makers and “leaders” –

the second intrusion into Iraq was much ruder upon our senses and

provided no basis on which to anchor ourselves. A few months into the

war listening to the radio I began drawing based on how the information

mapped on my mind. The material outcome was a series of 30 drawings

titled Road to Basra. Being an Indian of Goan origin, Basra has 8


significance for me because many Goan fitters and technicians bettered

their lives working at the Basra oil fields in the early 20th century.

These drawings lurched towards achieving cogency in terms of relating to

something being done in our name. I realized that I was hoping to

achieve understanding, in a way that I could hear my voice and never

forget what happened. It was at this point that I was reminded of the

myriad scripts that span millennia. Whether it be Aramaic or Hebrew or

Arabic, they all have the sounds of aleph, bet, gimmel, and so forth. In

fact a significant number of these alphabets have 22 letters. This is

true of Aramaic, Parthian, Nabataean, Samaritan and others.

For the Thamudic script (a northern variant of South Arabian script,

found on rock surfaces) I intuited sand and erosion; its dispersion

nonetheless cocooning or isolating entire townships. These thoughts led

to an extrapolated analogy with magnetic particles – social attraction

and repelling. The resultant drawings are two dimensional, and yet veer

towards a plausible third dimension which stops at the edge of each

letter form. Subsequent alphabets are treated differently.

The Nabataean script developed from the Aramaic around the first century

AD; of which inscriptions on stone exist in Petra, Damascus and Medina.

A trading people, the Nabataeans built spectacular monuments. Their city

was entered through a narrow crack in a mountain, and they were

mysterious and illusive in that little is known of them. They then fade

away and appear to have practically handed over Petra to the Romans. I

approached this alphabet by assigning signifiers stemming from

religious, socio-cultural, and historical references. The drawings

assign ambiguity to the figure and ground to convey dissonance. Each

stroke was executed once in terms of color, color gradation, pressure

and allowing for the ground to show through. Color was discretely

engaged to convey time that appeared somewhat still, but with impending

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uncertainty. I attempted to convey the haze of a maelstrom, or looming

encounters that are puzzling, yet are very much harbingers of memory,

and congeries of emotions.

Knowing and its impacts

A subject, an experience, an event, characters, emanations; the

fictional, the epiphanic, the euphonious; the ineffable yet palpable are

phenomena we encounter but cannot quite pinpoint the moment of awareness

or sensation nor locate their entry/exit. We may simply say as I do: we

do not come by our thoughts; they come to us. Nothing mystical here,

nothing apocryphal. Simply is. But we move on through drawing –

employing that armature of thinking, to stay in a reality that we

attempt to perceive and glean from more than one vantage of

contemplation.

Indra Sinha (2011) shared how as a writer he sustained the vexation of

his unique creation Animal: “In Animal’s People I drew on many people's

experiences, but as you surmised, dug most deeply into my own feelings,

inadequacy, frustration, to fuel Animal's rage." To visually bestialize

Animal in Animal Returns to Bhopal, I reached back to a time when I remembered

my dreams, unlike today. A time fecund as it was: where entities

contorted, hobbled, presented festering protrusions; and along with my

intense stuttering augmented my dread.

To arrive at a contemporary visualization of the Corpus Kali, Ibegan looking for a model whose life and art spoke of an intense sexual energy. The Lolitaesque renditions of Kali as seen in Indian calendar art and popular posters were simply notreasonable models of inspiration. I see her as a dancer, alwaysmoving in relationship to a chronology of timelessness. In the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, I found an appropriate conceptual model for Kali. (Pinto 2003, p xv)

The nature of my drawing is not about documenting the day-to-day. It’s

about helping me understand ideas that come to me. Thus, drawing is a 10


vehicle to register my absorption of those thoughts. Thereby, I attempt

to understand what moved me. It’s not always about me to begin with. I

deeply believe We do not come by our thoughts; they come to us (a body of work).

This impacts the way we understand things (Pinto 2008).

This knowing, can never be a complete awareness, and is not to be

regarded as some reward of hard work. Incidentally I see my practice as

labor – artistic labor with an intellectual component. It is an

engagement of the will toward subjects that could give back and provide

sustenance – vigor through ideas with requisite honest labor – a

rigorous prerequisite for engaging with any surface: paper, board, mica,

wood, linen, silk, etc.

Apprehending an idea is as though the artist is peering into a well and

seeing one’s reflection. Substantiation of the idea suggests that the

artist…

…is conscious of his entire life and profoundly illuminated, as is the entire universe, which we neither see nor feel, enclosed in the psychological world of our learned ways of seeing (Klein 2007, p 168).

Knowing in this regard is about gaining cognizance of relationships –

seeing the underpinnings of ones experiences, being conscious of what

one is drawn towards. The ineffable is hard to put in words as also to

image. But one’s being seeks comprehension – via emotional spaces,

stirrings which do not lie dormant, the urgings that prompt inquiry as

in this personal anecdote:

This night in the late-70s exemplified the blackness of sumi,its wide spectrum which inclouds a deafening depth through a range of luscious gradation—sumi no notan (the gradation of sumi[ink]). It was in Batim, Goa, India, part of the Velha Conquistas/Old Conquests, and my mother’s birthplace. The night howled a storm, spraying a Gaussian distribution of electricity in streaks of lighting, appearing to stand as if

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this spectacular was meant only for this tranquil village. The palm trees were fleetingly projecting shadows that shivered and changed shapes, intermingling forms, and presenting fresher frights. Perhaps if one were to make ink out of the soot of burnt palm trees, would it be as dark as the Japanese and Chinese sumi? The blacks appeared blacker than the Cardinal India Ink, which had introduced me to the idea of sheer blackness, a richness of tone: in depth, in texture, coalescing into phantasmal umbras, conjured by sudden flashes into the darkness. One aspect of my journey into drawing began that night.

I feel privileged that my drawing approach is informed by certain ideas

and paths – Shodō (書書, The Way of Writing), and Bokuga (ink painting), as

also Yūgen (書書) an aesthetic concept which expresses a deeply refined

elegance. It contains in its Kanji (書書, logographic Chinese characters) a

swathe of signifiers that convey aesthetic complexity: faint, profound,

dark, black, abstruse, heaven, quiet. Yūgen is a compound word, each

part, yū and gen, meaning “cloudy impenetrability” and the combination

meaning “obscurity,” “unknowability,” “mystery,” “beyond intellectual

calculability,” but not “utter darkness.”

An object so designated is not subject to dialectical analysis or to a clear cut definition. It is not at all presentable to our sense-intellect as this or that, but this does not mean that the object is altogether beyond the reach of human experience. (Suzuki 1959, pp 220-221).

Vague not ambiguous, subtle yet profound, nuanced yet gently hinting an

attitude, a quiet elegance, “shadows within emptiness” (Tanizaki 1977).

What could these words be describing? objects, ideas, sounds,

darknesses, shadows around us that our minds can barely pin down. They

are describing sensate experiences which cannot be explained either in

absolute terms nor in a relativist manner. Ideas such as the profundity

of a sensation, the feeling of order, the lamentable beauty of the human

condition in impoverishment, solitude, loneliness and despair. Reality

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is to the human understanding an unknown quantity, which we feel in a

most concrete way.

As with Zeami’s yūgen, there is Rikyuu’s wabi (a sense of tranquil

solitude), and Basho’s sabi (patination of life/age, impoverished yet

dignified). Yūgen is exceedingly hard to convey – it eschews linear

thought processes, yet may be sensed/manifested upon engagement in the

creative act.

My practice also includes the figurative, although to a much lesser

degree. A haiku by Matsuo Bashō 1644-1694 (1997 p 96), which exhibits

yūgen has been for me an inspirational catalyst towards an ongoing

project involving drawing dance students rehearsing at the Fiorello H

LaGuardia School in New York City. The dance class drawings which

parallel my caliigraphy in Kana, sense and capture the dancers’

fluidity, much like grass swaying/billowing in a meadow.

Shizukesaya 書書書書 How still it is here—iwa ni shimi-

iru 書書書書書 Stinging into the

stones,semi no koe 書書書 The locust's

trill

Yūgen in that sense is the becalmed self free of anxiety, doubt,

strategy, machinations – a self that expresses

form/shape/space/movement/ discovery of an equation – which truly

appears to evoke wonder in the one who experiences. An idea of mystery

pervades the comprehension of seeing something of the ineffable.

Pictures must be miraculous: the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended.He is an outsider and father. The picture must be for him, as for anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an

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expected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need (Rothko 2006, p 59).

In Shodō I have found a model and tools to express my frailties and

certainties through its repository of various minds and hands as

inflected upon paper, bamboo, wood, stone surfaces, and seals among

other supports. My focus has been on Rinsho 書書, Kana 書書 and Tenkoku 書書

(carving seals in stone; a sister art of calligraphy) – three extant

practices of calligraphy which nourish my sense and sensibility. Rinshō

is a practice within Shodō where one copies the masters (classical works)

as also creating unique pieces inspired by those seminal works. Rinshō

develops intuition and awareness. The scholastic possibility of my

engagement with line has increased exponentially. The lines in kana were

developed and handed down by women, and referred to as onnade (woman’s

writing). The practice of kana as well as striving to perfect it moves

me, affirms my existence, and adds to my vocabulary through which I hope

to convey a sensibility that is currently beyond my reach.

In our minds, there is awareness of perfection; when we look with our eyes we see it, and how it functions is mysterious to us and unavailable

(Martin 1992, p 31).

The movements in these various styles (within many streams of

calligraphy) have afforded seeing nuance via the information

encountered, and via praxis, much as a kata (a sequence of movements in

the martial arts); as in making analogies with subtle aspects of an

encounter and assigning weight and correspondence to phenomena. Further

possibilities include embedding the “calligraphic line” to lay texture

by shaping/flicking strokes, building tonalities, and via erasures,

rubbings, splotches to convey flow, impediments, masses, and stranded

elements with their own presence nonetheless; all of which permit the

viewer’s understanding of a given drawing, although my works are all

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titled. In a sense it’s about penetrating the veils I the drawer seek to

lift via my mind, hand, and breath, as perhaps my verse suggests:

Line and marks define, convey momentum;Delineate space, pierce space, radiate space, sensibilize space. They hatch texture, layer toneSplit the curtain, raise up storms; Approach as tsunamis, create Upheaval;Give hopes their horizons Convey sensibility.

Working with Time: Narrations

Through the Procellous Narratives I allow myself to incorporate the

detritus from my vocabulary of visual marks; and redeem them via

juxtaposing and forging relationships between them to substantiate form.

They are a part of my family of marks; albeit the

combative/'dysfunctional' side or rather my stridently principled side.

What follows is an event, the knowledge of which has resonated with my

life and way of seeing into the shadows of my thoughts. It happened in

1961 in the shunting yards in Wadala, Mumbai.

The wagons crept silently up the shunting slope, toward a hillock upon which two rail lines delineated a broad gauge track. The track had borne countless freight loads as they lumbered their way up the mound, to be shunteddestination-wise where their arrival was awaited. It must have been one of those mildly chilly late mornings, when thesmoke and dust from the steam engines and the haze from fumes of the large diesels, the shigris (coal fired stoves) hung close to the ground. Just the other day yet another individual had been run over by a Harbor Line local train.

Mother had perhaps looked in the direction in which wagons appeared over the hump and not seen anything. Or yet,she had just missed the contours of the wagons as they stealthily trundled up the line to be shunted down the hill.A pair of arms reached out and pulled her and the child in her arms out of the path of the lumbering wagons. She collected herself, turned around, but the saving hands had vanished. Years later looking down from the bridge which finally got built, she sometimes saw herself walking across the tracks with her precious bundle – a gift she had high hopes for, and to which she had given a special name. Both

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had survived. The child that day on the shunting hillock, the author of this essay, developed a predilection to think in the visual.

Although I breathe today, the knowledge that things could have been

different is perhaps what led me to contemplate my concerns through

drawing – where one cannot be easily manipulated or used:

The ideal we are all being educated to believe in, is the extravert useful person. Why? The idea is because the extravert useful person is the most exploitable type. You cannot exploit so easily the man who is constantly reflecting upon life, and upon his conditions; who questions existence, who is troubled by desires, which seemto the useful person, not only beyond his comprehension, but utter nonsense, to be quelled by a nice practical commonsense society, where things make sense because they are useful (Collins 1991, pp 15-16).

In this regard every drawing of mine, is about giving form, when I had

come close to losing mine. To keep perfecting with means at my disposal

including complex movements earned though calligraphy, is what the

future points to. Some of these thoughts along with other fleeting

concerns have made it into a book of 192 drawings titled Sympathetic,

Pathetic, and Apathetic Spaces, qualities associated with human interaction. I

am now ready to start on drawings that speak to me about my mother and

her elders, her formation, her marriage to my father, my vagrant mind

being enveloped by thoughts I had no idea would flit though my mind much

less allow themselves to be slowed down and peered at, as if looking at

a speculum; a mirror.

Ekaksana – the one-moment: Working with Time, Silence, Leisure

Drawing is an intense activity, a movement of movements yet done within

what should be enacted as retreat allowing things to coalesce into

leisure – a form of silence which is a prerequisite of the apprehension

of reality: only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do

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not hear” (Pieper 1952, p 46). In this regard time is moment upon moment

– where one hears silence, not as a void but time as a moment, and it’s

those points that we put onto paper, moving in and out of making

correspondences.

A measure of solitude certainly has allowed for a better receiving, much

like in Kodo – (The Way of Fragrance), the verb used is kikimasu (to

listen), meaning that one listens to the incense as opposed to smelling

it. The internal dynamics and functioning, figure in my drawing as one

scrim in the layering – modulating the touch, allowing through

modulation to see other suggestive possibilities. In works of an

extremely abstractive nature, the sense of keeping oneself open to

dynamics encountered by the body, albeit with a nod to years of

practice, cannot be minimized.

My personal practices and assorted artistic engagements are a way to

make sense of what holds the world together. In time we begin to see, or

must hope to see our practices as larger than ourselves. Working with

time is a concrete activity and rigorous practice; embracing/penetrating

a thought, and maintaining silence to the extent attainable. The other

aspect is conveying glimpses of time in one piece but without freezing a

moment.

Stomping Ghats of Thought: Metaphors & Titles

Spatiality, temporality, looking through appearances, drawing from these

apperceptions, and attempting to weave in such consciousness is my

drawing practice. Working with time involves one’s being having to be

present with it; to remember (re-member, coalesce, to settle on an

event, walk in onement), to reconcile and become one with the event,

subsequently to draw out of it, so as to be able to draw from it.

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Drawing for me is seeking comprehension, and perfection, and is not

weighed by a therapeutic component. The compositions must still live by

themselves.

The word Untitled does not sit well given events that have shown much,

brought validation, and contentment. So, my titles affirm memory:

Vicissitudes of Exile, Onsen Musings, Lonespace, Tall Arrow, Ekaksana, Siege, Missionary

Position, Renascent Meanderings. Existing in the Existential while Balancing on Pointe, the

Procellous Narratives, among others. Variation in style is dictated by the

subject. We do not come by our Thoughts; They come to us are drawings which may be

regarded as paintings, through which I have attempted to work

unconsciously. Here we have a receiving. Is this about creating worlds

within ourselves? Is it about seeking natures within one’s spirit?

Negotiating convictions? Allowing eyes to proliferate on the body yet

not becoming all eyes; seeking reason for its own sake is a hardship to

the body.

The meaning of the world is reason: for the sake of reason the world exists; at first it is the battleground of a childlike, burgeoning reason, but some day it will be the divine image of reason’s workings, a true cathedral. Until then, let man honor it as the symbol of his spirit, which is ennobled as he is ennobled, in uncharted stages. Therfore let him who would gain knowledge of nature, practice his ethical sense, let him act and mold according to the noble core of his inwardness, and nature will freelyreveal herself to him. Ethical action is the one great experiment by which all the mysteries of the most manifold phenomena are solved. He who understands this experiment and closely reasoning can break it into its parts, is the eternal master of nature (Novalis and Klee (drawings) 1949,pp 49-51).

We are “a by-product”...“of a lot of productivity” (Chari, 2011) – of

productive energy on the part of many others. The spirit is the shield

and pointing towards a transcendence from our intra-egoic selves. We

must commit ourselves to lose instilled and learned fears, to revel and 18


collude with our sensations, thus committing to many small births.

Moving away from amnesias, towards seeking ones nature, or natures. Much

like being in the center of centers. As also, the splendid possibility

of perfecting self and work – being one with the line – allowing

awakening.

Acknowledgements

This essay is for my father (late) Antonio Bernado Benedicto Pinto who

understood a lot, said very little; and Otilia Pinto nee Figueiredo for,

among many touches to my spirit, naming me Venantius.

To Cecilia Castelino, friend, companion, wife – for being there for me,

and allowing me to be.

To (late) Vianney & Yulette Castelino for widening my horizon and reach.

Thanks Dr. Marcelo Guimarães Lima, Dr. Irene Barberis and Júlia Townsend

for the opportunity to present at CTL2. To Steve Garner for founding the

Drawing Research Network and being supportive, Damian Fennell for Art in

Action 2006 and a thoughtful essay; Phil Sawdon/Tracey, Eduardo Corte-

Real, Joicy Kottur, Johannes Fritsche, Sondra Graff, Seikou Kaneko

(Sensei), Kan Kanzaki, Madhav Chari, Javier Lamela, Elvita Lobo;

Norimasa Takaya, Sorako and Tomoyo; Hiroki Satake, Sunil Khushalani,

Masayuki Fujino, Sharmila Karamchandani, (late) Esther Castelino, (late)

Sundarabai Dhas, Byron D’Silva sdb, Vincent Rasquinha sdb, Adolph

Furtado sdb, (late) Zolia Castagnetti fma,. Wilcke H. Smith, Mary

Carroll Nelson, (late) Linda Doherty, (late) Gina Coniglio, and Suneta

Nandhuri.

To Michelle Mathesius, Elisa King and Cedric Tolley of the Fiorello H.

LaGuardia School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, New York.19


References List

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Chari, M 2011, Phone conversations [March to May].

Collins, C 1991, The vision of the fool, early drawings (catalog). Anthony d’Offay Gallery, Derring Street, London.

Fennell, D 2009, Drawing is seeing (an essay distributed to visitors at my drawing exhibit Evaporated Meanings). Available from: <http://venantiusjpinto.blogspot.com/2010/02/drawing-is-seeing-by-damian-fennell.html>. [28 February 2010].

Klein, Y 2007, Overcoming the problematics of art, the writings of Yves Klein, trans. K Ottman, Spring Publications, Putnam, CT.

Martin, A 1992, Writings/Schriften, Cantz, Winterthur.

Matsuo, B 1997, The narrow road to Oku, trans. D Keene, illus. M Miyata, Kodansha, USA.

Novalis/von Hardenburg, F 1949, The novices of Sais: sixty drawings by Paul Klee, preface S Spender, frontispiece A Masson. Curt Valentin, Mount Vernon, NY.

Online Etymology Dictionary 2001-2014. ‘Speculatio’ Available from: <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=speculatio&searchmode=nl>

Pieper, J 1952, Leisure: the basis of culture, Ignatius, San Francisco.

Pinto, VJ 2008, ‘Venantius J. Pinto’ in An illustrated life: drawing inspiration from the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers, ed D Gregory, How Books, Cincinnati, OH, pp. 203-207.

Pinto, VJ 2007, ‘Levitating enclosures, procellous washes and shunted wagons’ in Dekh Revista da Casa de Goa, Nova Serie No. 2, Setembro: proceedings of the convention of the Goan Diaspora From Goa into the World. Lisbon, pp. 15-17.

Pinto, VJ 2003, ‘Notes on chapter silhouettes’ in Encountering Kali in the margins, at the center, in the west. eds. RF McDermott & JK Kripal, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, LA.

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Rothko, M 2006 (orig. 1947), ‘The romantics were prompted’ in Writings on art, ed, annotated, chronology M López-Remiro, Yale University Press, NewHaven, CT.

Sinha, I 2011, Email Conversation [26 March 2011].

Stein, E 2000 (orig. 1922), Philosophy of psychology and the humanities Vol VII, trans. MC Baseheart & M Sawicki, ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC.

Suzuki, DT 1959, Zen and Japanese culture. MBJ Books, New York.

Szymborska, W 1997, ‘Conversation with a stone’ in Nothing twice: selected poems, bilingual trans. S Baranczak & C Cavanagh, Wydawnictwo Literackie,Krakow.

Tanizaki, J 1977, In praise of shadows, Leete’s Island Books, Sedgwick, MA.

Additional Readings

Garrels, G 2005. Drawings from the modern 1945-1975, Museum Of Modern Art, New York.

Hunt, JD, Lomas, D & Corris, M 2010, Art, word and image: two thousand years of visual/textual interaction. Reaktion Books Ltd., London.

Kierkegaard, S 1962, Works of love, Harper & Row Torchbooks, New York.

Kingston, A (ed.) 2003, What is drawing?, Black Dog Publishing, New York.

Lai, TC 1973, Chinese calligraphy: an introduction. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

Morita, K 1992, The book of incense. Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York,London.

Pinker, S 2007, The stuff of thought: language as a window into human nature, Viking, New York.

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Speculatio through Drawing

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