Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Andrew Ireland

Thesis 2021

This work is part of my thesis series where I randomly selected works off of @spamdrewireland my quick drawing instagram account and decided to rework them into a 3D space and then once again into a digital drawing space

“I like to make artwork that is funny, and I’d say generally my goal is to get a laugh out of the viewer. I try to exist in the cross-section of weird, creative and funny. Artists I’m inspired by include David Shrigley and stand-up comic Demetri Martin who uses his drawings in his act.I focus on finding humour through my creative processThe first step of the process includes doing drawing sessions of quick ink drawings on paper. This part of the process was inspired by Ed Pien’s series of 3 minute drawings. The fast pace of these drawings produced an aesthetic of immediacy; which really appeals to me. This process also had a lot in common with the process of using improv for comedy writing. I had recently read “Truth in Comedy: The manual of Improvisation” By Del Close and Charna Halpern. It explains how the funniest improvisers respond to the developing scene; rather than making jokes, and by doing so achieve truth and comedy through honest reactions. Doing drawings in this hasty fashion using ink and paper allows me to respond to the images as I’m creating them for an honest and humorous outcome. The second step of my process involves randomly selecting pieces out of the huge stacks of drawings I have, to work on as a sort of collaboration with myself. The randomization helped alleviate the pressure of decision making, while simultaneously inspiring me to see new possibilities for an idea, following the belief that limitations breed creativity. Finally I decided to turn the works inside out one more time and add an element of digital drawings as a response to the presentation limitations of our time. I inserted these pieces into digital drawings and made scenes with a hasty drawing style to give these works a way to have a dialogue with their original forms.”