I believe that the ability to draw and use visual language is an innate capacity which is native to us all. I have used this innate ability to deliver messages and to record observations by using the technique of spontaneous drawing. Spontaneous drawing is not only a practice to improve my artistic skills but also a process of self-assembling. The latter is more important to me. Without any preparation or preconceived ideas, the expression of my spontaneous drawing is aleatoric and random, and the painting is full of overlapping imagery and fractal shapes, melting and recombining.

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The practice of spontaneous drawing is an approach whereby I release the unsorted negative emotions which have been stored in the subconsciousness. The drawing process basically allows the hand to move ‘randomly’ across the paper and also visualises the subconscious by using various materials whether you are familiar with them or not. With practice, a personal technique will develop, and it allows drawing to be done without conscious self-censorship. Free of rational control, the technique allows a way of expressing the subconscious. Drawing skills are not necessary for proceeding with spontaneous drawing. However, certain experience and skills have been internalised and are spontaneously displayed in graphical form.

 

In the 1920s, French Surrealist artists André Masson and André Breton were the first to express the idea of automatic drawing, using spontaneity as the bridge to connect with the inner self. Other artists who used the technique of automatic drawing were Austin Osman Spare, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and Jean Arp. I started using spontaneity as a crucial element of drawing in the early 1980s. About the same time, I began exploring many different types of meditation. I can recall the moment when I realised they were the same practice – assembling the self.