artist’s statement

My recent work explores the language of drawing, mark-making, and line quality, using thread and string to create large and small-scale work on paper. I was searching for a less self-conscious way of drawing a line. I dipped flexible materials into ink, investigating their physical properties. The first drawings were done on a horizontal surface. I then began working vertically on the wall, observing the impact of gravity—how things hang in space, and the tension between something fixed and something falling. I became fascinated by the unrestrained marks and the random happenings created by materials saturated in ink.

I am inspired by the materials, rhythms, and patterns found in domestic work, and in crafts traditionally associated with women, such as stitching, mending, and weaving. In my Line Studies drawings, the repetitive patterns created with string and rope are reminiscent of textiles—like threads on a loom woven together on paper.

Lynne Tobin