The James Harris Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings by Roy McMakin in our project space. Informed not only by traditional painting and sculpture, McMakin’s style also developed out of architectural and furniture design. Where the hand of the artist is removed from his sculptural and photographic works, in the drawings it is palpably present. His pencil drawings therefore become an intimate act of expression for the artist; a solitary moment in which his mark making is driven by something largely felt, or initiated by and guided within intuition.

In one series of drawings, strong hard lines perfectly draft cabinets and other pieces of furniture while McMakin’s mark-making and lighthearted compositions instill the work with a personal touch. These are not simply studies of form but through chiascuro and line the artist gives these inanimate objects are given a sense of humanness, beauty and humor. A chest-of-drawers takes on a personality. In one composition, it lies on its back, in another the chest bounces of an implied ground. Through subtle animations McMakin is evocative and sweet without being cloy.

In other works, a dense overlaying of arabesques, squiggles and lines create a maelstrom of information in which domestic objects and shapes tangle together. At first glance the drawings appear as scribbled sketches. Then the complexities unfold. The compositions revealing a sense of pleasure in things found in our ordinary environs.