Pencil coloured, pencil, pastel on coloured pastel paper - F4
The Sovereign Zone: Spatial Non-Coincidence in the Act of Drawing
The common understanding of drawing follows a linear sequence: the artist sees, time passes, and the hand responds. In this model, the discrepancy between object and mark is treated as delay — a problem of the clock.
Sustained practice suggests otherwise.
If chronology is removed, what remains is not duration but resistance. What we call “time” in drawing is more accurately a spatial condition: a field of tension between the eye and the surface. The present is not a point moving forward — it is a thickness through which energy must pass.
The Physics of Influence
In this spatial model, drawing is not a record of minutes but a negotiation of force.
Light enters the eye as perceptual charge. Pigment meets paper as material resistance. The difficulty of drawing is not slowness — it is conversion.
Let:
Iₒₚₜᵢcₐₗ = Optical Intensity (perceptual energy entering the eye)
Mₘₐᵣₖ = Material Inscription (the resistance of surface and medium)
What is misread as delay is more precisely described as Spatial Non-Coincidence (Δs) — the irreducible offset between perception and inscription.
This relationship can be expressed as:
Δs = Iₒₚₜᵢcₐₗ / Mₘₐᵣₖ
This occurs within what I call Jelly — the mediating field in which observer, motif, and surface coexist.
The equation does not measure skill. It describes strain.
-
When perceptual intensity exceeds material resistance, Δs increases: lines tremble, corrections multiply, scintillation appears.
-
When material resistance dominates, Δs compresses: marks become inert, over-determined.
Drawing does not eliminate Δs. It renders it visible.
Mₘₐᵣₖ = Material Inscription (the resistance of surface and medium)
When perceptual intensity exceeds material resistance, Δs increases: lines tremble, corrections multiply, scintillation appears.
When material resistance dominates, Δs compresses: marks become inert, over-determined.
The Sovereign Zone
Jelly is the Sovereign Zone of drawing.
It is not time extended, but space thickened. Within this zone, the artist does not advance along a timeline; they navigate a field.
Hesitation is not lateness.
Correction is not delay.
Both are movements within thickness.
A drawing does not store time.
It stores distance made visible.
Correction is not delay.
Both are movements within thickness.
It stores distance made visible.
The Davidson Hypothesis
Through practice and reflection — later clarified symbolically — the following expression emerged:
t₀ → t₀ + D
This does not describe chronological succession. It describes structural displacement.
D is not elapsed time.
It is the thickness of influence between perception and inscription — the displacement required for energy to crystallize into matter.
Perception and mark are not sequential events. They are offset positions within the same spatial field.
The hypothesis is named in honor of my mother and father.
It is the thickness of influence between perception and inscription — the displacement required for energy to crystallize into matter.
The De-Chronologized Mark
If drawing is spatial rather than temporal, the artwork is not a historical record but a preserved field of resistance.
Museums frame works through dates, encouraging distance: this happened then. Yet a mark does not transmit the past — it transmits optical resistance in the present.
When an observer looks at a drawing made centuries ago, reflected light enters the eye now. The negotiation of Δs resumes. The original artist and the current viewer become co-occupants of the same Sovereign Zone.
A drawing does not transmit time.
It transmits tension.
It transmits tension.
