ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Title

The Unfixedness of It

Authors

Kerry O'grady, University of Massachusetts AmherstFollow

Access Type

Open Access

Degree Program

Art

Degree Type

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

Year Degree Awarded

2010

Month Degree Awarded

May

Keywords

unfixedness, intuitive mark-making, drawing, discontinuous, perception, traces of fleeting present

Abstract

My drawings contemplate the unfixed nature of my experience. I draw from a state of uncertainty about the relationship between self and space, between a moment of experience and the one that follows it. My process involves intuitive mark-making in which instances of perception are indeterminate and discontinuous. I draw from the experience of unhinged moments, from silence and stillness, and from the indefinable, inarticulable, interstitial moments of perception between those that can be concretely described.

The immediacy of drawing, the direct engagement with the mark on the surface, is central to my work. Intuitive mark-making is a way of engaging as directly as possible with the indeterminate nature of my experience. As the drawn marks allude to a once-fleeting present, the layers of marks interact to remind me of the non-linear nature of time and the unfixed nature of experience. The making of the mark punctuates a fragment of experience, dividing it into before and after the mark. The esoteric nature of drawing, the variety of marks engaging on and within the surface, the ethereal traces, the engagement with the space implied by the panel, the discontinuities revealed between adjacent drawings on panel, and the implied experience compressed in the seams between the panels address multiple and unresolveable ways of experiencing a moment in a space.

First Advisor

Jeanette Cole