Mark Making: Dots, Lines, Textures

This Call seeks artists who especially lean into the language of mark making—with the surface of their works revealing the artist’s hand. Mark Making: Dots, Lines, Textures will consider textural surface exploration showing evidence of the creative process. Viewers who linger over a work will get a sense of the artist's hand moving . . . picturing them holding the brush, graphite, or palette knife. For artists who paint, prominent brushstrokes encourage controlled or spontaneous marks: gestural, expressive brushwork as well as repetitive, rhythmic, and deliberate strokes. Impasto serves as a relief map on the surface—scratch marks as signifiers pentimenti as traces. Viewers will perceive the touch and pressure embedded in the stroke and be better able to appreciate the physicality of paint and the record of the artist's hand at work. For watercolorists specifically, transparency and glazing also apply. Drawing technique—marks dictated by tools and the hand—likewise speaks to this exhibition's theme. Drawn lines that vary in pressure can be both descriptive and gestural. Accepted works might include graphite drags and charcoal smudges, cross-hatching, stippling, calligraphy, and ink bleeds.