Jeff Powell lives on the north Cornish coast in South West England.
Explanations are often sought. Answers always inadequate. My small pictures may belie the complex motivation behind their making and the aspirations that lie within them. They are analog in a digital world, the activity of drawing is an affirmation of ones humanity. Driven by the necessity for expression and to bring structure to confusion, I would, ideally, make work of profound simplicity. Less is more but less has to be enough.
Landscape inspired forms and the natural qualities of the medium combine as metaphor for the conveyance of existential concerns. Life on the north coast of the Penwith peninsula is rich terrain this material.
Whilst I am aware of theories of pure abstraction which deny points of reference, there is usually a desire for recognition, for associations to be made and for meaning to be wanted. I’m exploiting a fraught area between abstraction and the figurative which acknowledges the two dimensional nature of a drawing within its edges. I work towards an enigmatic open endedness. I hope for connections to be made by the individual viewer, that the personal can be universal, the subjective understood. Music always accompanies the making, maybe affecting it subliminally, I think it was Nietzsche who claimed that all of the arts aspired to the condition of music.
Limitations of format and material allow me to proceed to the next piece without major deviation, to seek nuance, for development and improvement to be evolution rather than revolution. There is little planning. Improvisation following initial mark making leads to an unpreconceived finish and hopefully to a balance with a quiet vitality, a hum, a rightness, and kind of stasis as though time has paused. Maybe as an ambition a little grand for such small things but as Beckett said “try, fail, try again, fail better”.
