Automatic sketch recognition is a challenging problem due to the variability in hand drawings, the variation in the order of strokes, and the similarity of symbol classes.
Drawings of block variations as components of columns, walls, and arches.
"Currently, I have a dozen basic codes that allow me to work a series of drawings from tiny variations in their code," the artist said.
The show includes more than three dozen paintings, drawings and prints, all variations on the same visual cues and themes, first among them the catenary, which is the term for a curve made by a cord suspended between two points.
The drawings are composed of variations of charcoal and graphite, and then softened to convey each strong-willed subject with a wash of vulnerability.
The brutality of the slave era's middle passage mixes with the "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" of Disney's "Song of the South". Like Matisse's late paper cutouts, Walker's silhouettes and related animations are variations on drawings.
The biggest response with fan art so far has been of the character Octocat, there's over 1000 drawings of him mainly bizarre variations of him coming out of Russia.
Representative of the accomplished drawings from these years are variations for a composition of the sea nymph Philyra with her lover Saturn, alongside Parmigianino's painting of that same subject.
When I went to see him at his Tribeca loft in February, the day after he got back from Cape Breton, he immediately took me downstairs to the ground-floor studio to see the new drawings: twenty-seven large-scale abstract variations, in thickly impastoed black oil stick, on the circular motif that has occupied him for several years.
A selections of collages at Boesky provides some perceptual clues (yes, that actually is a tomato!), while drawings at Nolan, slightly looser variations on the theme, open Ross's work up to show its affinities with gonzo comics and the eerie dreamscapes of Surrealism.
