Geoffrey Chambers

Dready Hand
a year drawing love

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From the 23rd of February 2013 to the 23rd of February 2014 Geoffrey undertook a visual meditation. The goal was to draw with a single meditation, love. The result is a series of sketchbooks drawings and paintings and a total of over 1300 images.

Too see the full series click here.

Love whether it comes from within or without is often unobservable and unwitnessed most definitely subjective, the goal was to transfer the feeling via the artists mark. Referencing Brazilian Candomble and the West African practice of spiritual possession Geoffrey became a conduit and the vehicle, as Zora Neale Hurston elegantly put it “the Horse”, for Dready Hand’s ride. A name which Dready Hand embraced and referred to Geoffrey as such.

Dready Hand willed himself into being and is the atavistic recreation of the child that loved to draw when all else crumbled, the child that would find spaces like the underside of a cabinet or the quiet corner in a cupboard when there was a crayon but no paper to be found. At one stage we all draw and Dready Hand is the embodiment of a child with an insatiable curiosity for line who marvelled at the works of Goya, Durer and Degas, who thrilled at the magic of the mark and wanted to know more of them and make those marks for himself. In order to manifest the mark the medium chosen was one of the oldest art materials known to man, Charcoal.

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The youth that was Dready Hand also wanted to make choices on the models and his subjects in his drive to be realised in the physical world and Facebook played a part in that selection, whether it was one of Horses childhood friends from nursery school or a former band or family member, Dready Hand mined the Horse as a resource which also brought the Horse in conflict with some of the models who questioned why they were being chosen. Finally unleashed as an artist and an uncompromising one at that Dready Hand brought Geoffrey as ‘Horse’ full circle and centre to face his own personal issues.

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As a method of control and to ensure that Dready Hand benefitted the most from his year of life, Geoffrey created Dready Finger as a guide and a mentor for his practice. Ready Finger immediately changed his name eliminating the Dready prefix as weak and “sarf" and changed the spelling to Finga to reflect his identity as a cantankerous Afro Jamaican artist and poetic patois speaker. Finga; an accomplished artist in his own right is the passionate and inspirational teacher and mentor who is uncompromising in both his encouragement and his criticism, was instrumental in guiding the development of Dready Hand and allowed the fledgling artist not to be content with the mark but to spread his wings.

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Coinciding with a period of travel and the breakdown in his family life the journey of Dready Hand and Horse took them from Brazil to the islands of Hawaii, mainland USA and the United Kingdom and all the way back. Come with us on a journey of a million marks, over one thousand drawings and an emotional tale of love and separation.