These drawings evolved from an installation I created at Mobius Artists Group in May of 1999. Part of the installation included branches and twigs I gathered, grouped and tied with vines and grasses. The drawings of bunched and tied forms were reminiscent of the sheaves in the installation. As I draw, I consider the physical act of drawing. I am very aware of a specific tension the graphite has on a certain paper. The lines gather, creating tone and the paper and the gathering lines often reveal a form that I hadn’t consciously intended. I reinforce the revealed forms and they often begin a new episode in the drawing. The drawings describe elemental tying and untying, doing and undoing, boundaries, bondage and escape. The deceptively simple graphite line is tied and bunched with other lines. I collect the lines, gather and contain them on the page. The resulting forms appear in varied stages of tightness and looseness. The wound and unwinding forms have a totemic presence.

In the drawings, I present ideas about the complex forces of experience and relationship. Each drawing presents forms methodically tied or unraveling, gathered or escaping from bonds. They exist in environments of energetic celebration or shadowy menace. The forms act as characters experiencing the life events that bind us and pull us apart. I enjoy the way the gathered and tied forms evoke a figurative presence on the page. Gothic and Renaissance religious paintings often depict important religious figures organized in “gatherings”. They exist in shallow pictorial space acting out a theatrical version of a life event and its consequences. The grouped forms in my drawings suggest relationship or group activity. They have a celebratory quality or seem quiet and solemn. The environment around the forms places them in varied contexts. Energetic vines and strings may engulf the tied, entwined forms or shadows may surround them. In some of the drawings the tied forms have wire-like lines that attach them. The lines act as steadying, guy wires or mysterious restraints attached to something off the page. These “hardware” or mechanical elements assert an unseen force that increases the sense of menace in some of the drawings. The drawings present iconic tableaux of objects that suggest human form without being truly figurative. Some of the tied sheaf forms are like a strange, organic crop, something harvested, the product of an agricultural process. Some forms have mechanical characteristics reminiscent of industrial manufacturing. In either case, they have been have been acted upon.

I want the forms to be mysterious. They are bound yet float. They are engaged in the uncertain process of being tied and undone. I group the forms on the page suggesting relationship or isolation, reflecting complex interactions. I contemplate these interactions as I would a piece of theater unfolding before me.

—Elizabeth Strasser