The Maine Drawing Project was a statewide collaboration of arts organizations scheduled throughout the 2011 calendar year. Maine museums and galleries presented individual exhibitions dedicated to the medium of drawing. Topics ranged from contemporary works drawn directly onto gallery walls to early 19th-century drawings from the Saco River Valley.

A Celebration of Drawing

A drawing can be an absent-minded doodle, a casual recording of a view or an intense disciplined exploration of a subject or idea.  “The art of depicting forms or figures on a surface by lines” can be performed on almost any surface – plain paper, fancy paper, rice paper, canvas, mylar, cloth, rock or skin - with an astonishing variety of tools – graphite pencils, silver wire, twigs dipped in ink or paint, ballpoint pens, fat or skinny brushes, charcoal or fingers.

Now, when almost any image can be picked out of the air digitally, drawing continues to be a tool for intense analysis, discovery and delight. You do not know a thing until you have drawn it. I look at drawings in old sketchbooks done in long forgotten places and the visceral memory of what I saw and felt at that moment comes roaring back. I remember the very weather.

Draw freely or with patient difficulty. Learn to get it down – rough and raw. Develop the drawing later or not but get the idea on paper. A lot of changes in the art world and the world in general begin as drawings on napkins and the backs of envelopes. Practice. Train your hand and eye. Clarify your thinking. Make your mark.

Many Ogunquit Art Association members have written vivid and enthusiastic descriptions of the drawing experience as well as technical descriptions of the drawing process for the catalog. Read what they have to say and enjoy their drawings.

Nancy R. Davison
President
Ogunquit Arts Collaborative/Barn Gallery
August 2011