An envelope crammed full of nearly-impossible-to-describe comic booklets is a reviewers nightmare – thanks go to Malcolm Duff for making this bad dream come true. I Can’t Draw is a graphic meditation in which the artist repeatedly re-draws a set of goal posts in his notebook. Each successive drawing improves incrementally in quality and detail. Throughout this task he’s repeatedly interrupted by a teacher towering over him, chiding “You’re holding your pencil the wrong way” and offering helpful sounding but useless advice, such as how to hold a tennis racquet correctly. The artist gradually emerges from under his protective mane of shaggy hair and using the pencil as his weapon nullifies this overbearing authority figure by redrawing and reducing him to a simple diagram.
I Can’t Draw, and many other titles – malcyduff@hotmail.com
Reviewed by Mark Pawson for Variant Magazine
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