To Amazon or not to Amazon?

Study of sculpture charcoal, chalk, ink on envelope of Amazon origin

Having not done any drawing for a few weeks, I decided it was time to pick up the charcoals, chalks and inks. Drawing really is a discipline which I really get a lot from. I find I that whilst drawing I’m able to find a clarity thinking about and more importantly what I’m working on, trying to find new solutions to questions or compositions.

As can be guessed there is a lot of stuff rattling around in my head at the moment, currently I’m still processing information from a tutorial I had a few days ago with my tutor David Hancock. One of the subjects raised was how my work seems to be rather current and of the moment and that the materials I’m using to make my work can have a loaded meaning.

Case in point Amazon packaging envelopes, if you look back you can see that I have drawn on the inside of these envelopes for quite some years. This practice came about as I used to save said envelopes, I hated the idea of them being recycled when there could be other uses for them. Naively I never thought that the process of doing this would be seen as a comment on current society and spending habits.

So let’s take a minute and think about what the Amazon envelope represents in the current climate. For some Amazon stands for mass consumerism, with non-essential shops closed due to COVID lockdown restrictions Amazon is at the forefront of the e-commerce market, sending out billions of parcels a day, making it hard for for small independent shops to compete not only on delivery costs but also costs of products. Amazon is the Shark within the water eating up all its competition.

This also has made me start to reassess my involvement with Amazon. Amazon makes it so easy to get stuff without having to leave my house, my usual purchases are CD’s and books as let’s admit it they cannot be beaten on price. I also have Amazon Prime for watching television and to get free shipping on my orders, but now I have to start thinking if this is all ethically sound?

Going forward I will most probably still draw on these envelopes whether they are my own or collected from friends, as they have become part of my visual language until I am able to find a new medium to repurpose and draw on.