Ariel Oehl Not drawings, not yet paintings

In tattooing, a wanna-do is a design the artist has worked out well in advance and then guards in a folder, waiting for the right person to walk in. These are the same, only for walls: drawings that have not yet grown a body, and rooms that so far exist only as rendered photographs.

Over the past few years I've been working on a range of drawings and paintings as a kind of ritual practice. My work as a musician keeps me travelling a lot, so I always carry a sketchpad, my iPad, pencils and crayons with me. As a result, most of my work starts very small (on a small piece of paper, or as digital sketches and collages) and often only manifests once a space of the right size falls vacant.

So it happens that a large painting lands on a restaurant wall, a small drawing finds a niche in a friend's apartment, a series of five inhabits a company lobby, a magazine shop turns a drawing into a postcard edition, or a band asks for a t-shirt print.

I've warmed to the idea that I won't become an architect (that remains a childhood dream), nor a full-time painter in this lifetime, but a leisure-time contributor to spaces: tiny dances on canvas, a bit of colour here and there. Just makes me happy.

  1. Mühlviertel

    Digital drawing; Acrylic, soft pastel and pigment sticks on cotton canvas

    A wide granite highland famous for boulders the size of small houses, which are called rocking stones despite showing no intention of ever rocking, and where people like to be photographed pushing against them with one hand, the way tourists do at the Leaning Tower of Pisa

    Mühlviertel — 1
    Mühlviertel — 2
    Mühlviertel — 3
    Mühlviertel — 4
    Mühlviertel — 5
    Mühlviertel — 6
    Mühlviertel — 7
    Mühlviertel — 8
    Mühlviertel — 9
    Mühlviertel — 10
    Mühlviertel — 11
    Mühlviertel — 12

  2. Pas de bourrée

    Digital drawing; Oil pastel, pigment sticks and acrylic on cotton canvas

    A bourrée is three quick steps, of which the third tends to arrive slightly after everyone else's, which matters a great deal on a dance floor and not at all on a canvas, where nothing has to arrive on time

    Pas de bourrée — 1
    Pas de bourrée — 2
    Pas de bourrée — 3
    Pas de bourrée — 4
    Pas de bourrée — 5
    Pas de bourrée — 6
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    Pas de bourrée — 8
    Pas de bourrée — 9
    Pas de bourrée — 10
    Pas de bourrée — 11
    Pas de bourrée — 12
    Pas de bourrée — 13
    Pas de bourrée — 14

  3. Rest/Unrest

    Digital drawing; Charcoal and soft pastel on cotton canvas

    Somewhere between not enough happening and far too much happening there is a narrow band where everything is fine, but it keeps moving, so that by the time you have found it you are usually already sad or already overloaded, quite often both in the same week

    Rest/Unrest — 1
    Rest/Unrest — 2

  4. Chromesthesia Arabesque

    Digital drawing; Oil pastel, pigment sticks and acrylic on cotton canvas

    About one person in a hundred sees colors when they hear music, which the remaining ninety-nine tend to find difficult to believe, although none of them can explain what pink sounds like either

    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 1
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 2
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 3
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 4
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 5
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 6
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 7
    Chromesthesia Arabesque — 8

  5. Tutti a Tavola!

    Digital drawing; Oil pastel and pigment sticks on cotton canvas

    Two works for an Italian trattoria, where they will be looked at almost exclusively by people waiting for their food, which is arguably the most attentive anyone ever is

    Tutti a Tavola! — 1
    Tutti a Tavola! — 2

  6. Seated Standoff

    Digital drawing; Potato print and oil pastel on paper

    Everyone in a western appears to have been drinking since breakfast, which makes it rather unlikely that four men could stand perfectly still facing one another for as long as the scene requires, so here they are sitting down, and the tension turns out to survive it

    Seated Standoff — 1
    Seated Standoff — 2
    Seated Standoff — 3
    Seated Standoff — 4
    Seated Standoff — 5

  7. Closing Lemma Blues

    Digital drawing; Acrylic, soft pastel, felt-tip pen and paint sticks on cotton canvas

    There is a mathematician in the family who talks about unsolved problems the way other people talk about magic riddles, and now that machines are working through them at a pace nobody quite expected, it is hard not to wonder what becomes of the part of him that was built for not knowing

    Closing Lemma Blues — 1
    Closing Lemma Blues — 2
    Closing Lemma Blues — 3
    Closing Lemma Blues — 4
    Closing Lemma Blues — 5
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    Closing Lemma Blues — 7