Lynne Tobin

My recent work explores the language of drawing, using thread, string, and ink to create work on paper. Searching for a freer way of drawing a line, I began dipping flexible materials into ink, investigating their physical properties. The first drawings were done on a horizontal surface. I then began working vertically on the wall, observing the impact of gravity-how things hang in space, and the tension between something fixed and something falling. I became fascinated by the unrestrained marks and the random happenings created by materials saturated in ink.

I am inspired by the materials, rhythms, and patterns experienced in daily life, and in crafts traditionally associated with women, such as stitching, mending, and weaving. In my Line Studies drawings, the repetitive patterns are reminiscent of textiles-like threads on a loom woven together on paper.

For me, working with these simple materials on paper is a meditation. The tactile surfaces and repeating linear references invite the viewer into an internal space and quiet realm. There is something about simplifying the drawing process to its basic elements which allows a truer and more immediate expression to emerge. For me this is when drawing becomes like poetry.