JOHN TOMLINSON

Breaking Silence

    I see drawing as an agent of breaking silence. Once the drawing instrument engages the surface its strokes reveal the light and its silence is broken.

    Once the silence is broken it begins to ask questions, which is what art does.

    It asks me how do I represent the time and world I live in, and how my perspective and emotions respond to it.

    The word “drawing” holds the true nub of what it is, drawing the world into oneself to interpret it and know it better and to share the knowledge with others. Not the absolute truth, but a particular way of looking at reality. My drawing are expressive in a uniquely personal way, yet rooted in a classical tradition.

    I pare down the drawing to three essentials which are the drawing, the title and the sound.  The experience of how the elements work together is left to the viewer’s interpretation.

    The late pioneering writer on new media, Douglas Davis, wrote in the 1990s that my drawings had a sense of animated narrative in them and urged me to explore that. It was a timely challenge as the media of video, sound and animation were just then breaking through the silence.

    Upon creating my first drawing animation in 2006, “small gestures/Modes of Escape”, segments of which can be seen and heard in the large projected work, I saw the opportunity to write a digital score to the piece that I called a soundwork which seemed to me to complete the breaking of silence. 

John  Tomlinson • 2022