Maryclare Foá

Artist statement

Concepts
I'm concerned with exploring the process of drawing/mark making, around and beyond two dimensions, involving movement of place, duration of time and selection of sound and imagery. In 'Tracing Manhattan' (December 2003) I drew a line down Broadway the length of Manhattan Island, in 'Walking Drawing' (June 2004). I revisited Fulton and Long's walk to the country from Central St Martins (Charing Cross Road), to Radlett, wearing a camera and sketchbook harness, I drew and walked while documenting the process.

Influences
Trace: My fascination in the Trace began when I saw a photograph of Rio Pinturas (Chile), the paint spat outline of 6 hands on a rock waving to me over thousands of years.

"He will not have been present but he will have made a gift by not disappearing without leaving a trace. But leaving a trace is also to leave it to abandon it not to insist upon it in a sign." Derrida from "At this very moment in this work here I am" from "Re reading Levinas" Indian University press 1991

I mean to leave a trace temporarily, yet still I mean to leave a trace.

Documentation: I am more contented by life if I can have evidence, revisit my favourite moments. Perhaps I'm wallowing in the joy of recollection and find it easier to move forward if able to reflect back now and again. A way of assessing where I am where I've been where I'm going. Maybe, like Butades's daughter I'm aware of the impending loss, and need a keepsake gift for myself as solace.

Butades daughter (The story that has become known as the origin of drawing) "She (the daughter of the Potter Butades, who lived in Corinth) was in love with a young man, and when he was going abroad she drew a silhouette on the wall round the shadow of his face cast by the lamp" Michael Newman's text for Avis Newman's exhibition Catalogue (Ikon Gallery1995)

(Ana Mendieta" Silueta with Firework and Bamboo, Silueta with Gunpowder.1976
Hamish Fulton "the way to the mountain starts here" 2001.
Rebecca Horn "Pencil Mask" 1972
William Pope L "Thompson Square crawl" 1991)

Career path
What I did at College (the Royal College of Art Illustration dept) in the 80s was called Location drawing - I saw it as an opportunity to go out and be in the elements to be in the landscape and put that experience of physicality into my work - thereby endeavouring to fill my drawings with a sense of place and my exhilaration of that process. I.e.: In the Arctic I stood on a plank overhanging the ships side and painted the cracking through pack ice, in Papua New Guinea I wore a grass skirt and looked like an elephant gone bush on a coral rock island. These experiences read now as anecdotal performances 20 years ago and without documentations. Having completed an MA Fine Art Course at Central St Martins (Sept 2004), my practice is now informed with current technology and knowledge of context regarding other practitioners working in trace performance and documentation. I am currently developing proposals for site-specific works in community programmes and researching documentary projects and performance drawing works.