Randall Finnerty

HIGHWAY SIGNS
01.13–02.19.2000

Drawing is the intermediary object that the creative individual—or the observer of things—crafts and places between his gaze and the world he wishes to transform. — Jean-Charles Lebahar

The age of communication dominates the image in all its forms, and to lament—in the same vein as Régis Debray—that “there are too many images and very little substance,” how might drawing, for its part, carve out a space so that its content is brought to the fore? Must it, in order to stand out or distinguish itself, return to something radically black-and-white if the act to which it claims to belong concerns communication?

The series of drawings presented by Finnerty consists of a triptych accompanied by a set of seven drawings of the same dimensions, as well as two large-format works dating from 1996 to 1998. All are figurative and convey a deliberately ecological message. They seek to express concern about the environment, the relationships between humans and animals, and the barrier—sometimes literally concrete—that exists between nature and civilization.

The soft-focus treatment applied to these drawings gives them a dreamlike quality, with a blurred light presenting them as scenes from another time. The spaces that enclose them—circles or semicircles—also help us perceive these as isolated images born of an alternative worldview. This is because Finnerty combines landscapes and animals drawn from his sensory experiences while traveling by car on the roads of Northern Ontario. His observations are rooted in a memory in motion. Upon closer inspection of these illustrated fragments, one might imagine that this retrospective vision takes the form of a rearview mirror. These dichotomous transcriptions evoke, in a naturalistic way, an external reality emerging from a mirror image. It is said that when we draw, we dream the drawing. It is from this imaginative force that the communication in Randall Finnerty’s works emanates.

Sonia Pelletier