Lines Between State and Process

For a long time, I looked at a broken line mainly through the lens of gestalt psychology.

It says: when a form is not fully closed, our brain fills in the missing piece and completes the form.

So we still see a circle.

Or a face. Or a tree.

The law of closure explains this phenomenon very convincingly.

A line describes more than a form

A few days ago, I noticed something while drawing.

I was working with lines that kept breaking off, starting again or growing thinner, until they finally lost themselves in the paper.

They felt more alive than a neatly closed contour.

Why is that?

Not because they described the form less precisely or less completely.

But because they told a story.

The line and the factor of time

Suddenly a thought came to me.

Perhaps a closed line differs from a broken one not only in how it describes the form.

But in the factor it adds: time.

A closed line describes a state.

It says: this is how it is.

A broken line is a snapshot of a process.

It might say: this is coming into being.

Or: this is dissolving.

The broken line adds a fourth dimension to a drawing: time.

It doesn't just show how something is shaped.

It hints at a process. Becoming or dissolving.

Lines describe change

The longer I thought about it, the more possibilities I discovered.

A line can grow wider, swell or taper.

It can fray.

Or slowly disappear.

Each of these creates a very different effect.

A form drawn with a closed line conveys composure. Certainty.

A form drawn with a line broken many times suggests that something is emerging or falling apart. It shows us a little of the future.

A line that opens up can mean liberation.

Or loss.

But it is not the line itself that decides how we experience the drawing.

It is the relationships between the individual elements on the paper.

Drawing is storytelling

I realised: I don't just draw objects and describe how they look.

With broken lines, I draw processes.

A figure is not simply there.

It emerges.

Or it vanishes before my eyes – even as I add line after line to the drawing.

This changes my whole way of drawing.

I no longer have to explain forms completely.

I am allowed to show them as they come into being.

Or as they pass away.

The viewer doesn't only complete the missing contour.

They experience time.

A new question

While I was drawing these lines, I noticed something else.

The line doesn't only tell something about the subject.

At the same time, it tells something about me.

Some lines come into being hesitantly.

Others boldly.

Still others seem tentative or determined.

Perhaps a line never describes only the object.

Perhaps it always describes the relationship between the person drawing and that object as well.

Can a line describe the outside, the object, and at the same time the inside? Me as the subject?