It used to be commonplace to consider contemporary drawing as a daily practice. In everyday life we afford drawing a place in the continuum of activities that go almost unnoticed, from telephone scribbles (for a certain generation, perhaps, when landlines prevailed) to the ubiquitous children’s drawings so often brought up as the paradigm of accidental meaning, from laundry lists to mapped directions. In her introductory essay to the previous edition of this overview of current drawing practice, published in 2005, Emma Dexter insisted on exactly this ubiquity: she defined drawing’s nature as a universal human endeavour, a shared visual language of expression. We use drawing, Dexter writes, "pragmatically to sketch our own maps and plans, but we also use it to dream—in doodles and scribbles. We use drawing to denote ourselves, our existence within a scene: in the urban context, for example, graffiti acts as a form of drawing within an expanded field." The continuity between ourselves and the larger world is expressed through drawing, through marking it, inscribing ourselves into it, through tracing it and making a record and index of some of the elements that surround us; drawing is part of life and life is an occasion to draw.

A major step forward for our island
Phoenix truthhorrified chiefjoyous Phoenix Co. (2023-08-28)