Experimental and drawing works explained
Barrett Ratcliffe’s intentions in drawing draw not from conscious intellect to guide the marks. The process is more an absorption in the meditation of allowing ‘feeling’ to guide. This method affords awareness in moments of transition thus allowing sporadic injection of conscious control. As this control materializes in marked form, further subversion is employed by opposing the directions of what may automatically be desirous. In simple terms carrying out the opposite of what may be consciously dictated, thus challenging one’s own sense of stabilization. In doing this, arriving at locations or destinations purely and by surprise. The results of such work equalling a vision of something so far removed from the norms of the everyday, something that serves as a delightful de-stabilization of one’s own daily perceptions and senses.
Thus upon viewing such meditations, the resultant work lends personal reflection to the mundane. Simultaneously, the work offers glimpses of the possibilities in new life forms.
Barrett Ratcliffe terms this long studied process ‘Apposing the Automatic Response’.
(A navigation of conscious and subconscious creativity)
This has remained one of the key methodologies within these bodies of work whether they are sculptural, visual or three dimensional. In this, there always remains a key characteristic sense and interplay of balance and imbalance within the work, again relatable to Wabi Sabi.
