Mimesis: Nothings in Particular

Mimesis

1. In classical Greece, mimesis demanded beauty and truth, but nowadays describes wider representational appreciations from the banal to the disquieting.
2. Phenomenology suggests our core existential pattern is perception: building the chaos of raw data into understandable experiences. Mimesis translates these subjective events for broader audiences through art and literature.
3. Heidegger states that things under our noses are invisible. These simple themes underpin my drawings, which represent things first caught out of the corner of my eye. Graphite patterns immediately reappear as the objects that provoked them. My images are easy to follow, and in turn I have followed in the steps of writers like Beckett and Perec, as well as artists (from Chardin to the Precisionists and Pop Art), and photographers (Walker Evans, Wright Morris). As everyday snapping on mobiles proves, fascination with ordinariness is timeless, and that, like death and taxes, mimesis will always be with us.

Keywords: boredom ; contemplation ; domesticity ; drawing ; ignorance ; materiality ; phenomenology ; representation ; scrutiny ; tonality