Jonathan Bouknight

Two Dancers; One Carries the Weight of the Other, 2013

Digital video, 3.20, and acrylic on butcher paper, drawings 48”x90” each.

The installation, Two Dancers; One Carries the Weight of the Other, represents a working process in my studio.  The paper is cut to my maximum standing reach, and the drawings are made from a blind contour method, the subject being the video footage I created.  The videos are shot in a way that mimics or documents my own observation: the lens moving in and out, the camera following my gaze of the subject.  The drawings serve as a type of meditation, a practice I can repeat day after day, letting go of control as I draw without taking my eyes away from the video footage.  For me, the drawings are not illustrations of the original subject, but they become a documentation of my own observation, a physical translation as my hand draws in tandem with my eye movement, my eye following the gaze of the lens.