unwilling to forgive

Indian Ink on Paper - 760x570mm - 2016

The drawing is set in an imagined future. I wanted to create the human races monument of remorse over the death of nearly all animals of the world, deaths that were the result of humans’ reckless consumption. Humans pump oil into the mouth of an animal skull as an apology and offering to bring the dead animals back. The oil flows from the cities up the pipes into the skull, due to the desperation of humans there is too much oil being pumped for the structure to take, the excess is flowing into the surrounding environment. The structure on the right is where the humans view and voice their pleas, it also represents how with our own hands we’ve cut off the life of the Sun, drilled into earth to burn it, leaving poison waste that’s ejected into where the animals lived, away from human homes.

I tried my hardest to create a visual language that I hadn’t seen before (by ripping off heaps of stuff I have seen before). I wanted it to kind of be like a sculpture relief that tells a story, serving as kind of a record. So it’s an imagined description\representation of the actual structure rather than the structure itself, if that makes sense. I don’t know if this worked out well or not, I can’t tell if it’s awesome or a pile of jumbled shit due to looking at it for so long. Hopefully you lovely people can see some of the story in there, if not then I hope at least it’s fun to look at.

Finally finished this after nearly 3 years of on and off work. If you look far enough back in my Instagram you’ll see a few initial practice sketches for this piece. Lots of other drawings got in the way, as well as getting drunk in other countries, as well as general life shit. How I draw changed so much from when it started until now, I literally forgot how to draw it as originally intended. In hindsight the whole thing was a bit of a train wreck, still fun to do though.

I tried my hardest to figure out how each element would look. I would draw in my sketch book certain elements over and over again until I discovered something I was happy with. This is counter to my usual process of winging everything and hoping for the best. After the drawing being dragged out for such a long period of time I had to give up this process due to a loss of interest in the drawing – I was tired of thinking about it and wanted it over. I doubt this would have happened had I dedicated myself to it when I first started but unfortunately life got in the way.

There are mistakes that loom over the drawing, I don’t wish for the drawing to have worked out differently though. Every drawing is what it is. Same for life maybe. Every drawing is a way to learn how to do something new for a future artwork, just as every action we take in life is a way to inform ourselves on how to interact with reality in the future. Or I could be thinking into all this too much.

The title of the drawing comes from the Stromcrow song ‘Unwilling To Forgive’. The song isn’t about the themes I have in this drawing but the title itself and sound of the song (mixed with a couple of the usual favourites) helped to inspire this drawing.