Kentridge has talked about drawing as a model for thought. In drawing the image is developed over the course of time. It is not an instantaneous event. This means that between beginning and ending a drawing, there is this space where the initial idea is tested by what emerges during the process. Meaning is constructed through the developmental phases of bringing the image into being. So what you might think the drawing is about in the beginning is not what the drawing ends up being about, and this is a direct result of what happens during the journey of making the drawing. In this way, drawing is not just about making an image or documenting some activity but a way of thinking in slow-motion as Kentridge puts it. Kentridges describes how drawing can function in the following way:
" ... I believe that in the indeterminacy of drawing, the contingent way that images arrive in the work, lies some kind of model of how we live our lives. The activity of drawing is a way of trying to understand who we are or how we operate in the world. It is in the strangeness of the activity itself that can be detected judgement, ethics and morality. Trains of thought that seem to be going somewhere but can't quite be brought to a conclusion."
[William Kentridge in conversation with Carolyn Christov-Bakargi, Press Play: contemporary artist in conversation, Phaidon Press Inc. New York, 2005]
" the seriousness of play"
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