Red Drawings and White Cut-Outs
Red the color of blood and passion, is loaded with associations. “Acid” red seems an apt descriptor of the keyed-up hue Drake has chosen for these works, and it runs in contrast to the historical medium of red chalk, whose rich and subtle tonalities and textures contributed to some of the most sublime drawings ever made (especially during the Renaissance and just after: one thinks, in particular, of Michelangelo and Pontormo). Drake is aware of the historic richness of red as a drawing color, but pushes it to further extremes. The non-naturalistic color also creates a degree of distance, removal, and abstraction, no matter how realistic the subject matter.
–Carter Foster, “Red Drawings and White Cut-Outs”
The nature of perception and the viewer’s ability to interpret a material into an image becomes the actual subject in Drake’s cut white drawings. Our eye moves across these works in a way unique to them, their interplay of surfaces, and their large scale. Drake takes on the concept of surface, integral to the problem of an image and how it functions, by literally cutting into it, creating a mesh of holes of looping, curving shapes of various sizes, often elongated and tapering.[…]. In this way, Drake “draws” not only with the cut line but with shadow and light.
–Carter Foster, “Red Drawings and White Cut-Outs”
Exhibitions
Moody Gallery, Houston, TX
September 8 – October 6, 2012
Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA
October 1 – 29, 2011