imprográfika

Exploratory Drawing as an Intuitive Creative Method

presentation* at “Intuition and Synchronicity”,

Transdisciplinary Conference,

London Arts-Based-Research Centre, (LABRC)

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“Tas Agnosias” (The Unknowns):

This presentation explores “tas agnosias” [the unknowns] as a methodological tool for arts-based inquiry. In particular, I am investigating how intuitive drawing can reveal potentials of embodied knowledge and exploratory creative methods.

Drawing with purposiveness without purpose

—as “the opening of the form”, the opening to the unexpected, the unplanned, the emergent—

may give access to observe aspects of intuition as it is expressed in drawing’s creative complex process.

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–definitions

According to the dictionary, intuition is ‘the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.’

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Hague defines intuition as

‘a spontaneous, immediate perception of truth that does not rely on the intermediary of rational thought processes or overt, external physical evidence’

Hague, A. (2003). Fiction, Intuition, & Creativity: Studies in Brontë, James, Woolf, and Lessing. CUA Press., p. 63.

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In the context of creativity, Stein defines it as

‘a method of formulating or solving a problem in which the person has no conscious awareness or knowledge of how he arrived at the answer or what stimuli led him to it’

Stein, M. I. (2014). Stimulating creativity: Individual procedures. Academic Press, p. 203.

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The wisdom that resides in our primal brain and gut neurons.

Swart T. (2019), The Source: Open your Mind, Change your Life. Random House.

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A paradox-condition

Intuition is understood as a behavioral mechanism that is differentiated from conscious processes, and that doesn’t follow consciously controlled logic or sequential reasoning.

Even though intuition can be understood through conscious observation, almost as an external observer (a 4th perspective), only after the action, in contrast, or as an exception to more deliberate actions.

Consciousness of an unconscious state, observing the spontaneous, is a peculiar coexistence but an indispensable condition for understanding the intuitive creative process.

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Why drawing?

The practice of drawing is chosen as a case study for examining intuition, as it is a specific action—a process that requires attention and concentration, where the subject-drawer engages in a certain graphic ritual, while at the same time allowing intuitive actions to emerge spontaneously.

Additionally, drawing is a non-logocentric, non-verbal form of knowledge and way of communication that facilitates and gives us access to the unspoken and the ineffable.

Drawing is a universal kind of writing, beyond culture and linguistic determinations. Drawing is a non-signifying movement, a gesture that describes, transcribes, configures following a process that is not purely logical, but not completely illogical either.

Within this relatively controlled non-logocentric gesture, drawing as an in-between space can give us direct access and facilitate access to intuition.

Drawing as a practice for intuition to be experienced, observed and analyzed.

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Why abstract drawing?

From drawing practice and creative process, we choose to observe intuition in abstract drawing.

Abstract drawing is a form of art that doesn’t aim to represent recognizable objects or scenes from the real world.

Building upon surrealistic “automatic drawing” and “art brut” traditions that suppress conscious control to allow unconscious expression, this method actively avoids preconceived ideas, “readymade” visual codes, mimetic aesthetics, representational regimes, and algorithmic pattern-making logic.

Doodles, those spontaneous drawings we create when we speak on the phone or when we are distracted, unaware or unpreoccupied, are a common experience of abstract drawing—tracing without purpose, without certain or known scope.

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Disconnected-Connected

Abstract drawing utilizes visual elements, such as lines, shapes, colors, and textures, to create compositions that explore ideas, emotions, or aesthetic qualities independently of external references.

Independent from external perceptual stimuli, abstract drawing can be understood as an inner experience of an idiomatic graphic dialogue.

Not focused on the external environment, the practice of abstract drawing invites and, during its production, allows the brain’s default mode network (DMN) system —a set of interconnected brain regions —to become active.

Disconnected from external stimuli, but well connected with other inner mechanisms that can potentially be activated: spontaneous insight generation, pattern recognition and implicit processing, memory integration and synthesis, self-referential processing, reduced cognitive control, emotional integration.

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purposiveness without purpose

Like in mind-wandering, daydreaming, and states of mindfulness drawing with purposiveness without purpose, “A purposiveness devoid of purpose, end, or conclusion that is nevertheless a purposiveness, the pursuit of a purpose, an end. However, this end cannot be properly designated or fixed”.

A framework without specific end, rules, but with a desire for pleasure, play, enjoyment, expression and opening to estrangement.

´In other terms, drawing unfolds a novel sense that does not conform to a pre-formed project.

It is carried away by a design that joins with the movement, gesture, and expansion of the mark [trait]. Its pleasure is the sensual pleasure [jouissance] of this unfolding,

or the pleasure of this unfolding itself inasmuch as it invents, finds, and summons itself further, projected onto the trace that has nevertheless not preceded it. ´

 Jean-Luc Nancy, The pleasure in drawing.

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Openness

Drawing as an endlessly renewed act, the appearing of traces, traces that bring other traces in multiple metamorphoses, inviting imagination to activate, to raise unpredictable memories, comparisons, and previous knowledge, and mostly to assist and follow the flow of an unpredictable configurative “dance”.

Drawing as the experience of an estrangement “is grounded in availability and access” (Noë, 2012, p.33), being available for the new to arise. Availability as a prerequisite to perceive new knowledge and experiences.

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“Tas agnosias”

This availability, disposition and opening to the unknown and unpredicted that abstract drawing brings is close to or can be associated with “Tas agnosias”.

“Tas agnosias” [the unknowns] is used here as a methodological tool for arts-based inquiry.

Agnosia in physiology is defined as the inability to identify objects through one or more senses, such as sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch.

“Knowing The Unknowable, Reaching the Unreachable” is found in the apophatic theology of Gregory of Nyssa.

Or, in Dionysios Areopagite (Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century CE). For Areopagite, “tas agnosias” is related to ignorance, not in the sense of lack of knowledge, but in the sense of transcending human reason and understanding to approach divine knowledge.

As an arts-based research methodology, “tas agnosias” offers a framework for investigating how intuitive practices can generate knowledge that transcends linear, consecutive thinking, inviting us to perceive drawing as an intuitive, innovative “writing” experience and encounter.

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A chance for synchronicity

The state of “agnosia”, as a state of opening and chance to let oneself explore freely through graphic figures, is also a chance for synchronicity with oneself and the unconscious parts.

Abstract drawing seems like play, “a ritual” to meet ourselves, to meet inner unconscious thoughts and preoccupations, to observe reactions and attitudes.

Sometimes it is “a change and acceleration of time”, other times it is a larger process to unfold, feel and give sense to the synchronicity with oneself.

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Opening and difficulties

“Tas agnosias”, the unknowns, is presented here as a condition that helps us observe, concentrate, and open ourselves. The opening is proposed through drawing, a gesture and movement for opening.

Beyond control and logic, from the emerging drawings and the traces in their unpredictable formations, we have the opportunity to observe aspects of intuition as spontaneous free action.

Thus, we observe:

• the difficulty of surrendering to free movements,
• the difficulty of distancing ourselves from bias and graphic habits,
• the difficulty of entering into a flow without thinking about the result,
• or the even greater difficulty of connecting our emotions, feelings and preoccupations to the process,
• or, the effort that is needed to transfer impressions by enhancing or initiating this peculiar internal dialogue.

Obviously, the biggest difficulty is that of recognizing intuition during the creative flow, letting it be free and letting ourselves be free, and synchronized with it.

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Thoughts – conclusions

Regardless of the degree of control, instinct is always there to guide, to motivate, to be expressed depending on our availability and openness.

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“To exist is to sketch oneself [s’esquisser].

One would like to write s’exquisser—to open oneself to a form which shows itself in the movement of its uprising [surgissement].

No one would consent to live if they did not experience this desire

—to open oneself to the desire of (letting oneself)

being drawn to the outside.”

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This gesture of existing allows us to understand the drawing phenomenon as a complex gesture that in every aspect contains intuition, and is a mode and a ductus to access intuition as it is expressed in drawing’s creative complex process.

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References

Agamben, G., 1999 The man without content. Stanford University Press.

Areopagite, D. 5th–6^th century. Mystical Theology

Hague, A. (2003). Fiction, Intuition, & Creativity: Studies in Brontë, James, Woolf, and Lessing. CUA Press.

Hardman, T. J. (2021). Understanding creative intuition. Journal of Creativity, 31, 100006.

Nancy, J. L.. 2013 The pleasure in drawing. New York: Fordham University Press.

Noë, A. 2012. Varieties of presence. Harvard University Press.

Stein, M. 1974. Stimulating creativity. New York: Academic Press Inc.

Swart T. (2019), The Source: Open your Mind, Change your Life. Random House.

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*by Anthi Kosma, 23.07.25