Drawing Nothing (2013) Laura Zhang

Drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed media, book, digital prints

 

Drawing Nothing a collage of miscellaneous fragments from my perception of reality. The premise of my practice has emerged from doodling: spontaneous drawings, using a simple black line and representing nothing. The thought was linked to Buddhist Zen philosophy:

Mind at Peace

When the mind is at peace,

the world too is at peace.

Nothing real, nothing absent.

Not holding on to reality,

not getting stuck in the void,

you are neither holy or wise, just

an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un) (The Enlightened Heart 34)

 

Drawing became a form of meditation, forcing myself not to visualise an image, but instead produce spontaneous, abstract marks that grew from a focal point; aesthetically developing and responding to a composition of marks until it was finished.

 

Rather than developing an idea I have developed a creative visual practice, which can then be critically questioned and further explored. Drawing Nothingness is a refined collection of this exploration, displaying the diversity of creativity as the practice flows through mediums in an interdisciplinary fashion. Through experimenting, developing and refining I can see that what started out as nothing is in fact fragments of everything.