varying degrees, separate or at one with the external world. He makes it clear that a sense of self depends on an awareness of ‘the other’, that is, things that are not perceived to be part of the self (Robbins 1986). Contemporary neuro-scientists have extended this idea to describe a model of the mind that may, to some extent, explain the phenomenon of consciousness itself. The brain is seen to be engaged in a constant process of observation and conversation, between different parts of itself, in a dialogue that is so complex that it produces an awareness of self and conscious being (Rammachandran & Blakeslee 1998). Maurice Merleau-Ponty understands that the body, as well as the mind, is essential to the dialogue which produces consciousness. Through his concept of the ‘lived body’, he explains that consciousness does not simply reside in our heads but is experienced by, and depends on, the body as part of its interaction with the world. As living organisms our existence is confirmed and lived through our bodies (Merleau-Ponty 1962).
Writing in 1901, the art historian Alois Riegel pointed out that vision shows a world that is made up of a confusing array of coloured surfaces, and which is not easily divided up into distinct objects (Riegel cited in Arnheim 1986). It seems obvious that human beings rely on more than the sense of vision in order to understand the world. The habit of drawing, that is, of dividing the world up with symbolic outline, involves processes of thought that are connected with other senses in addition to vision and is an exploration of the ‘otherness’ and the difference of things (Balint 1968). During his residency at the Centre for Drawing Alexander Roob made dozens of drawings of students at work in the Wimbledon College of Art. These were all executed in outline of an unvarying weight and quality. The images that he produced seem to expose the arbitrary nature of the human habit of dividing the world up with outlines. The drawings have a strange quality of unreality, where the clay statue of a model bears equal weight to the live model herself and to the sculptor at work in the studio. He describes the action of making a drawing as ‘for me a kind of musical act of feeling. Which disregards the substantive and focuses on the relational’ (Roob 2001). Alexander Roob’s statement seems to bring me back to the idea of drawing as part of a process that is an exploration of the world and, at the same time a response and an expression of the artist’s self that is projected outwards and on to the paper. If drawing is truly an ‘act of consciousness’ then, according to contemporary ideas about the nature of consciousness the activity that it involves must in turn, because it is a process of exploration, affect the consciousness of the artist (Arnheim 1986). At this point I would like to allow the, sometimes obscure and enigmatic, statements of contemporary artist to recede for a few paragraphs in order to explore these themes of consciousness and outline within the context of the historical roots of drawing and allow this perspective to illuminate some more aspects of this mysterious activity.