Daily Drawing Diary

Pen & Ink On Paper, 20cm x 30cm

DCR: The architectural drawings seem to me to be celebrating the city – they’re grand and welcoming. The composition draws you in. It’s a different visual experience than when I’m looking at the cities in Texas, which seem crammed, crowded and intense. These are more expansive and open, and I’m wondering if that’s because you’re very happy to be back in London.

Pen & Ink On Paper, 15cm x 21cm

RP: Meat is sold with every meal. I drove past battery-farmed cows, and it’s heartbreaking – it’s a mile long and it stinks, and you’re watching the cows in the desert, in scrubland, it’s 40 degrees outside and it’s like battery chickens but with cows, and it’s tragic…
DCR: I love the cow because aside from being a very good drawing, it’s a very tender drawing. Here is the 72 oz steak looking very tender and loving.

RP: I was trying to humanise it a bit…and that was done with spittle. There’s something quite sculptural about it, it feels like it could be from clay, a rough material. For me the cow represents hope.

Pen & Ink On Paper, 40cm x 30cm

RP: The first time I drew Big Bend I did it with spittle. I wanted to muck it up a bit, so I used a bit of moisture and added it on.

DCR: One of my favourite Patrick Caulfield paintings is called Bend in the road, which is a very similar composition, just a road bending between two mountains.

Pen & Ink On Paper, 40cm x 30cm

DCR: Going through the progression of drawings, Dallas City Limits appears very intense. it’s tight, it’s visually quite disorientating, and then you get Big Bend, and visually it’s almost like a release.

RP: Texas planning laws are strange; in some cities there are no restrictions, so you get huge urban sprawl. I wanted to put these drawings together to contrast the expanse of cities with that of natural land and openness.

Oil & Gold Leaf On Canvas, 120cm x 90cm

DCR: Two Paths Diverged reminds me of Allan D’Arcangelo and his trademark American highways that trail off into nothingness in that very clean style. What intrigued me is your use of gold leaf, which I know you have used in your abstract paintings.
RP: Every time I use gold leaf, my intention is to highlight something from either a narrative or an aesthetic point of view. Here it was about the journey onwards on the railroad tracks. This drawing is of a railroad in Marfa, a little town three hours from Odessa in nowhere Texas. The place is like an artists’ folly – it’s where the Donald Judd Foundation is, and it has a permanent Andy Warhol exhibition and some Dalí pieces and, bizarrely, a Prada store in the middle of the desert.

Oil & Gold Leaf On Canvas, 120cm x 90cm

DCR: Obviously the flag is a slightly controversial and very evocative American symbol.
RP: I think the american flag has two meanings, depending on whether you’re american or not. For Americans, it’s about equality, justice, freedom and pride in your country, and for us, a flag tends to represent imperialism and staking claim to land.
DCR: It’s a cultural difference because one very rarely sees a flagpole of the Union Jack in a city garden here for example, and if you do, strange connotations immediately spring to mind about nationalism. But at first glance, if you’re unaware of the title, this drawing almost depicts what looks like a slightly sad, run-down house about to be overwhelmed by nature. The trees are beginning to encroach upon it, the flag has no wind in its sails. Is this somewhere you stayed?
RP: It belongs to the grandmother of a friend of mine, and she was very proud to be american and Texan. She was in her mid-80s, went to the gym every day and was just one of those cookie-cutter grandmothers living in a typical Texan town. a lot of the people that i stayed with showed great hospitality. in drawing the flag, I’m signalling the slight confusion i have about it, questioning how i see it.
DCR:: I find this image very appealing and evocative. even though I’ve never been there, I can imagine standing at the gate, someone sitting outside on a chair, grandma baking.

Pen & Ink On Paper, 30cm x 20cm

RP: As part of the military recognition there was a Black Hawk fly-by. Interestingly, they placed all the wars in the same context, but there’s a difference between them…
…I think Americans are a bit disillusioned. I went to Texas for the first time in 2005. going back in 2007, I noticed a change. You meet a lot of Republicans there, and their shine has been knocked off them a bit.

RP: 84000 people at a college football game. I love entering into the stadium, I love becoming part of that mass. I don’t really care who wins but I do like to be part of it…
…George Bush Senior was there as well. It was ‘military recognition’ night, so all of the veterans from different
wars were there, and they were being recognised during the game. A gulf War vet had a badge pinned onto him.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
DCR: That combination of military and sport is quite strange to us. You can’t imagine that happening here
just before a test match starts at Lords. It’s just not conceivable to us, and so it’s a very alien concept. But not in America; they parade their heroes. They are heroes, and it makes sense to them to celebrate that at mass events. You know, if you’ve 85,000 people watching a ball game, an awful lot of them will be veterans of one war or another…

Pen & Ink On Paper, 20cm x 30cm

RP: She was doing her lips at the table and we just caught her.
DCR: It could almost be a still from a 1950’s film.
RP: I did feel the drawing had a very filmic quality to it.

RP: ‘Mariposa’ is Spanish slang for gay. Houston is the third biggest gay centre in the States, yet up until a few years ago, Texas had a law against ‘homosexual conduct’. The state is full of contradictions. It has so many oil dirks but is also the biggest producer of alternative energy. There’s an ongoing tension between liberalism and conservatism.