bursaries 2009 - seventh bursary the David Gluck memorial bursary christopher miltonThe £1,000 2009 David Gluck Memorial Bursary for drawing was awarded to Christopher Milton for his striking graphite drawings inspired by a 'half remembered' visit to a London fetish club.  ′Lush′ by Christopher Milton  ′Singer′ by Christopher Milton Chris' drawings, together with those of the other five short-listed artists, James Allen, Sally Firino, Sarah Leonard, Freya Pocklington and Yanko Tihov were shown at the 2009 ING Discerning Eye Exhibition. “Drawing is my primary practice; it is a tool that both reveals, creates and records information. It has a lucid and deceptive simplicity that renders form and meaning all too quickly, the content rapidly and spontaneously manifests itself, arriving on the paper apparently prior to any considered thought process or intention, requiring me to acknowledge what I did not appear to know or may never know. I say only apparently, for the roots of the spontaneous images are ultimately fed by unresolved concepts, feelings and emotions that were not fully cognised at the time, but through drawing activity are brought to the threshold of consciousness and are made manifest. This rapid and fugitive nature of the medium creates a catalystic effect enabling a ruthless distillation process within the work, enabling me to overlay, obliterate, and edit, to define and derive content far faster than painting. Reflective analysis to further define intention and direction always comes later. Over time one reflects on the chaos and things sink in which modify ones response, concepts form and one falls to juxtaposing images and making associations in a desperate, yet rational attempt for understanding. An understanding that manifests as a desire to distil the content, to progress ones work, to define order, meaning and direction, but ever mindful that it may not lead to certainties or truth of ones place in this world, or the way things are. These opposing activities of trying to find sense and reason, and at the same time accepting that reason may be beyond one's logic in this context creates a dynamic tension; a synthesis of the intimacy of expressive drawing fused with the more considered critical distance of conceptual contemporary practice. In my opinion this marriage produces a potent fusion; a unique form of conceptual expressionism that has a rigorous philosophical and intellectual rational, but is inevitably rendered by the slippery and seductive, but nevertheless revelatory chaos of drawing. The drawings themselves appear to be representational, but no specific person or place is visually depicted. It is more a rendering of a specific content, a distilled essence or archetype reminiscent of particular types of people, places, everyday objects, and the feelings these universally evoke. The characters are mere figments of the imagination; the works are therefore not a voyeuristic reportage in the traditional sense. Memory, feelings and responses initiate them, as opposed to the detached critical distance of direct observation.” Christopher Milton some works by the runners-up A compilation of work by Sarah Leonard  ′La Strada′ by Sally Firino  ′Face 1′ by Yanko Tihov  ′Liverpool St Station - etching′ by James Allen  ′Mertola′ by Freya Pocklington  Copyright © 2002-2010 The Discerning Eye ~ Web site by Shepperton Software |
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