Charles Poulsen

Contemplation exhibition

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"The drawings are more about energy than any particular subject matter, those invisible energies, internal organic forces of growth, the forces which drive the winds and currents, the energies within the earth."    CP

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Gridular series

Charles Poulsen has always drawn just as he has always made sculpture.  In 2010 he embarked on a major series of large drawings (153 x 153 cms),

and one of these is on show in this exhibition with the other two available to view.  

These drawings begin with a square sheet of paper and a drawn square frame within.  The square is chosen for its stability.  "By deliberately drifting the marks beyond the boundaries of the drawn square I am able to develop energies within the drawing without destroying the underlying composure of the square..."  The drawings are often developed using detailed aspects of the grid, the cross, for instance, or simply a straight line.  Some are worked entirely in pencil, while others employ the unique combination of pencil, wax and gouache which Poulsen has made his own.  Inevitably the physical aspect of working to such a scale - "the necessity of using the whole body to drive marks across the surface of the paper is part of the energy I am trying to create" - recalls, if no one else, Jackson Pollock.

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"The root word for "grid" in both Latin and Greek denotes "wicker work" - flexible twigs or shoots woven crisscross into a horizontal-vertical format".

This piece of etymological evidence is found in a recent catalogue on the work of Agnes Martin and the discovery of it came for Poulsen as a kind of endorsement, one which encouraged him to further explore possibility within the less rigid definition of "grid".

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www.charlespoulsendrawing.co.uk