A sheet of paper is a sacred temple. When not yet marked or written on it is pure; the space opens to infinity. The first mark, however, be it the start of a word or an image, introduces the possibility of corruption, but it is also the Archimedean point from which the whole world might be moved.
Outside the temple rages a chaos of germinal ideas, a swarm which by its own deafening noise drowns out all rhyme and reason. When one idea is singled out, smuggled in and cared for in silence, those ideas closest to it when they were all raging together outside are the first to become jealous and to turn against it. As the chosen idea grows strength and definition, developing its own character within the temple walls, jealousy spreads through the swarm, pulling it into a temporary alliance, and in waves it attacks. Repress and deny: lightning strikes. Backwash and bile: waters rise. A giant octopus, mistaking the sacred temple for a rival, pulls itself atop the dome, wraps its tentacles around it and, squeezing tightly, discharges ink through the oculus.
. . . . . . .
From confusion and indecision emerged this drawing. I’m witness to my own suffocation. Out of my blind spots as out of a spinneret these interwoven lines and forms were spun, the obsessive accumulation of detail filling the space and generating its own claustrophobically unsettled pattern.
From inability to find an idea that rises above all others and gives life, the mind plummeted below can become so densely tangled and clotted with detritus from false starts and abandoned ideas that vision no longer shines through.
This is a post-collapse concoction in a space cleared of rubble, a web stretched over the void, a drawing born of the soul of starless night. It initially came out of a creative block, a failure of vision, which I tried nonetheless to will myself out of from need to create. I wish I could create art out of all my personal failures. I’d fill a museum.
THE ART OF JOHN DOCKUS 