I believe that a good artist to compare and contrast my work to, would be that of Andre Breton. Breton was part of the surrealist movement and he worked with what are called “Automatic Drawings”. I like the idea of relating to him because the way he works, or his working process rather, is completely opposite of myself, however, the way he is trying to work with the human psyche and how it can be influenced and affected very closely relates to my work. So in a way he is just like me, but totally different. For those of you who are unfamiliar with automatic drawing, here’s a brief explanation: “Automatic drawing was developed by surrealists as a means of expressing the subconscious. In automatic drawing, the hand is allowed to move ‘randomly’ across the paper. In applying chance and accident to mark making, drawing is to a large extent freed of rational control” –Wikipedia definition (I know, not really official, but it explained it pretty well I thought). Anyways, I say this is the opposite of my working process, because when I begin a drawing, painting or sculpture, I think for much longer than I ever spend actually working on the piece. I plan out with writing and sketches and such and know exactly what path I want my mind to lead me. I may let my mind do some wandering, but I get all of that worked out prior to setting paintbrush to canvas or ink to paper. I always know going into a work the idea behind it and why I’m doing it. With Breton and his automatic drawings, it is just the opposite. When he began work on a drawing, he had no idea what he was going to produce or what it might convey to a viewer. He let his mind wander from start to finish. I find his idea of automatic drawing very intriguing, however, I don’t believe that I could ever produce work under those parameters.
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