LIVE TRANSMISSION

PORTRAITS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

TIME STUDY UNDER COVID

My work is culturally contextualized in the practice of drawing as a fundamental human endeavor and is continuous with the time-honored practice of drawing from life. It requires connection, direct observation and LIVE TRANSMISSION. I draw from and build on the historical continuum of the field. Through this work, I transcend the arbitrary “oppositions” between abstract and figurative art, between purely gestural expression and documentary intent, creating narrative work that results in a final product that is not figurative. The drawings themselves become a third actor or mediator in the experience. That which was beneath notice becomes concretized on the page as the paper receives the image.

Begun as an attempt to keep body and mind together in a foreign country where, at first, the language was unfamiliar, LIVE TRANSMISSION drawings track the movement of the hands of people engaged in life activities.  With both hands and with two or many pencils  used simultaneously, these seismograph-like drawings are done in real time in  real life.

MODUS OPERANDI: The method I have perfected requires close observation and actual drawing in real time with multiple razor-sharp pencils and both hands. I condense movement into accumulations of graphite line, combining the controlled refinement of classical drawing with the sensuality of spontaneous gesture. My LIVE TRANSMISSIONS render visible normally invisible or fleeting movement patterns, through seismograph-like drawing.

From the moment we are born our molecules go into the atmosphere. If the atmosphere were to remain stable and we could see these molecules, we could – theoretically – get away from the planet and look down and see the patterns of our own movement on the surface of the planet.

Following this idea I interviewed people who told me their life stories in terms of geographic displacment patterns. We recorded everything onto maps and when the storytelling was completed, I traced the linear configurations off the maps onto heavy drawing paper. Using the principal city in the life of the person as axis, I register multiple maps over that particular point, letting the rest of the lines fall where they will.  I am interested in making one drawing which represents the life of one individual. Color and detail have been added at the sitter’s request. The portrait is finished when the person recognizes and identifies his or her story rendered visible through drawing. Some of the Portraits have been done in a single sitting. Others have taken much longer. In one case, the person requested permission to do the color himself – Alaine Touraine, French sociologist. Begun in 1984 and completed in 1998, extended once in 2007,  the series consists of 153 portraits.  Process: interview > storytelling > drawing on maps > tracing off maps. Materials: graphite, colored pencil, inks on rolls of heavy drawing paper.  Several have been painted with acrylic paint on primed canvas. Average dimensions: 91,5 x 182 centimeters; 3 x 6 feet. Works in this exhibition have been done with India ink on Fabriano Michelangelo Roma paper. Dimensions: 19 x 26 inches, 48 x 64,5 cm

Begun in 1970, O’Hara’s TIME STUDIES account for her use of time in color-coded drawings.

This series accounts for three segments of her time spent in Tübingen, Germany teaching at the University of Tübingen a course entitled LIFE AND MEANING…it’s personal. During this time the entrance of the COVID virus slowly turned into a pandemic and killed many people. The mounting threat of the virus is quantified day by day in the drawings. (9 pages, graphite on cream drawing paper, 12 1/4 x 128 1/4 inches, 31 x 46,5 cm., plus an etching from Heinrich Seufferfeld made in the 1860s depicting the Hohentübingen Schloss, the castle in which I taught and worked during this period. My decision to do the drawings in grey scale instead of color was based on this print.)

Morgan O’Hara was born in Los Angeles, CA and grew up in post-war Japan. She received her MFA from California State University, Los Angeles and has lived in Berkeley, Paris, Berlin, Italy and, since 2011, in New York. Immediately before the period of Covid, the artist began teaching at the University of Tübingen in Germany where she remained during lockdown. As restrictions eased O’Hara moved to Venice where she established a new studio from which she continues her work. The artist has worked internationally in performance art festivals, mentoring young artists, and teachinhg master classes in drawing and the psychology of creativity.