Sketchbook
Posted on February 26, 2005
Comprising a symbiotic selection of images derived mostly from Paul (Mooncat) Schroeder’s sketch/doodle-a-day site, Sketchbook offers visual narratives which are provided a pseudo-storytelling impetus courtesy of a sequenced, panelled presentation. The elusiveness of these once-random sequences could either have readers delighted by the mystery or dismayed by the impenetrableness; but even when viewed primarily on an aesthetic level, there is much to admire in the kinetic energy of these connected drawings.
Schroeder sketches with urgent marker-strokes, not looking at the world directly, but absorbing it in fevered glimpses: the redbrick suburbia, the wind through startled trees, our weather. And as with Chris Reynolds and Richard Brautigan, these insinuations of life and landscape and atmosphere are like the stuff of eidetic memory; like ghosts that drift through us on their way to someplace else. In essence, Sketchbook is a reminder of things that slip our minds when we’re convinced there’s nothing to hold on to. It’s both oddly reassuring and quietly inspiring.
Comprising a symbiotic selection of images derived mostly from Paul (Mooncat) Schroeder’s sketch/doodle-a-day site, Sketchbook offers visual narratives which are provided a pseudo-storytelling impetus courtesy of a sequenced, panelled presentation. The elusiveness of these once-random sequences could either have readers delighted by the mystery or dismayed by the impenetrableness; but even when viewed primarily on an aesthetic level, there is much to admire in the kinetic energy of these connected drawings.
Schroeder sketches with urgent marker-strokes, not looking at the world directly, but absorbing it in fevered glimpses: the redbrick suburbia, the wind through startled trees, our weather. And as with Chris Reynolds and Richard Brautigan, these insinuations of life and landscape and atmosphere are like the stuff of eidetic memory; like ghosts that drift through us on their way to someplace else. In essence, Sketchbook is a reminder of things that slip our minds when we’re convinced there’s nothing to hold on to. It’s both oddly reassuring and quietly inspiring.
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