Artist:

Ian Ingram

“The All Most”

Charcoal, Ink, Beeswax, String, and Silver Leaf,

54” x 39” Inches, 137.2 cm x 99.1 cm, 2009

   “I drew this piece in preparation for the building crescendos of labor pains,” Ingram comments, “This work is not about what happens after the birth, but just moments before. The composition directs the eye upward beginning with the head emerging from a circle, a wrap of plaid, ordered and grid-like”

   The circle is repeated again and again representing a dilating cervix. Throughout, we find devices that the artist has employed, the ears are deliberately out of focus to make the face seem crisper, and overlaid “holes” and their patterns delineate shape and dimension. What gives this drawing its distinction and mastery, is the juxtaposition between the pattern of the cloth and the pattern on the face. The effect is not unlike looking at farmland from a plane while loose clouds randomly travel the sky, casting moving shadows and shapes on the ground as the land shifts height. By contrast, the scarf is given trompe l’oeil perfection to the point that it looks more like an applied photograph than a drawing, presenting the texture of its smooth precise weave so well that one imagines it to be cool and silky to the touch, the opposite of the face, rough with stubble.