In 1997, there was a gathering of young and eager students in Nsukka. We were undergraduates at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, first year students at the Fine and Applied Arts Department. As is to be expected, the very first class in a new school is a tasty mix of anxiety and excitement. It was our first drawing class and no one knew what to expect. But with an intense sense of adventure, we waited. Up until this point our  familiarity and courage came from knowing a little at least about pencil and paper. What would the subject of observation be? Would it be the wings of a bird, maybe a tree trunk? A kettle, an orange or a knife perhaps. How would we approach it? At the end, it turned out to be a “nothing”. An inspiring “nothing”.
 

It was a wondrous inspiration! A glorious discovery - to be able to draw “nothing”.
 

So how do you draw “nothing”? We were handed several empty sheets of drawing paper with a simple instruction: to fill the empty space with moving lines. Lines as thick and as thin, as dark and as light, as possible. As long as they were moving. Fill up as many sheets as possible. How can this be a drawing class, when we have been told not to draw anything else but lines! Where is the form to conquer? How do you know when to stop when there is no objective end, where there is no form to stimulate conclusion?
 

At the end of the class, we were impatient, unsure and also disappointed. The disappointment came from the simplicity of this exercise. Can it be that it was all so simple then, that drawing indeed was no great mystery? All you had to do was draw lines!
 

At this stage, it was unclear yet, but we had indeed negotiated a new curve. Simplicity was a new ease and a new difficulty. We were confronted with the freedom which unearthed in us the covertly hidden inability to discern that which we did not already understand. To enter a familiar terrain without remembering where the first step was. It would have been so much easier to conclude with a drawing of some fruit. Of course, the end would have been to achieve resemblance. “When it looks like it, you stop and draw another!”`
 

The insecurity came from the acquisition of an uncontrollable freedom. The freedom that inspires the power to draw anything, including “nothing”. The freedom of realizing that you did not have to confront the “difficulty” of drawing what looks like a head or a leg. or what resembles anything tangible. Alongside this insecurity was a new power, the power to create “the new” and the possibility to “see what was not there” and to substantiate the unseen by your own self-made rules so as to escape the inquisitive and  “intelligent” jury which is usually made up of elements such as :

“E no too resemble am...”
”E resemble am small...”
“E resemble am well, well ...”
“E no resemble at all...”

We were impatient too, eager to wrap up objectively in the accustomed circumstance of ascribing meaning to shape and resemblance to form. There had to be more to it, we thought! There had to be some kind of tangible substance to this classically simple task. Conversely, the answers did not come immediately and some of us never discovered the hidden message. But we all kept on drawing!
 

We learned through a simple class of drawing “nothing” that what creates a thing is more important than the thing which has been created. What makes form, line, is stronger and has other probabilities beyond form itself, that sometimes the conclusiveness of form can make the possible elusive. So why is line is not art? Why is line not an end and probably a beginning and also a middle? Who says the artist cannot make a mark without a nagging meaning ascribable to a sign or a symbol?
 

I try to do, I try to become, I try to ask.
 

If ever there was a question, if ever there were a collection of nagging questions, one from the many would be on the presumption that things have been made. How have things been made? Another question would be: is being determined or destined?  This inspires thought in the direction of construction. The making of things or the construction  of things or the process of things coming into being. Making a mark on a sheet of paper, a sheet of “empty” paper, may seem like the beginning of the process which leads to the eventual realization of the “imagined”. So when the imagined comes into existence, what precedence was there before the imagined? The occupation of empty space by the slightest indication of visible form (can this be the definition of a line?) suggests the beginning of a drawing. But what does it take to determine the objectivity of this first mark?
I have tried not to be dragged into the labeling of things, especially for the purposes of quick connections. Sometimes occurrence and its serendipity can define existence. It can reshape thought and refine understanding. In the process of learning, I am not too sure about the concreteness of anything, especially when I am an observer with a big “L” for “Learner” sign. Through the process of working with lines, I prepare myself for the weakness of being vulnerable. That is to say, accepting the position where I realize that I have to relinquish the power of not being in total control. The benefit of this has been that I have learned to rhyme to a rhythm that is not entirely mine. Knowing that there was a rhythm indeed suggests obedience to the process of creation rather a forced manipulation of its principles and elements.
 

In drawing a chicken or the head of a goat, the confidence comes from knowing that the achievement of a certain degree of likeness to the imitated object of observation is a connection enough to end the process. This is can be a marked end to the adventure of drawing. But should it be an end? Should the determination of known form be the end of a drawing? In my drawing process, I have been encouraged to ask questions. How have things have been made? What is the content of form? Should the process of drawing be framed in the certainty of conclusive understanding? Is a single form one of many micro-forms composite to a larger form? In drawing, quite simply, can form be said to be made of at least a line and therefore a conclusive end to it?
 

The pursuit of answers through questions becomes more possible in some instances only after the first mark has been registered. But before the event of mark making, the  ready-made interconnectedness between pen, paper and line creates the fourth character -the draughtsman. He must dance in between the spaces of the first three to determine the story on paper. He must draw the line between the answer and the  question: should there be a furtherance after the first mark? Is a line powerful enough to exist alone? Does it resemble a sign or symbol. Does this resemblance give it credit and a right to exist?
 

A line is like a life. It is a life. It is also like the cell within the nucleus of a life. Its potentials are a multitude. The determinants of its destiny are many and are varied. The journey of a line is full of adventures. A myriad of adventures; there is always the chance of multiplicity. A repetition of occurrence or congestion; solitary existence or static ; fluidity or movement. There is also condition: the thickness and thinness, and the shape: the square, the circle or the triangle. Even the oddly shaped. In its variants, would it not be better, not to attempt the definition, but instead accept the existence of line? If line is the beginning of form, can form as the accumulation of lines be the end therefore of line?
 

What is the meaning then of form? Does form require meaning to function? Does line require direction to exist? Can it not just float on paper and say “nothing”? Can it not be true also that a line, bare as a thread, can exist not just as a precedence to form but as  form itself? Should form require discernible features for it to acquire acceptance?
 

Construction is an important asset of my thought process. In doing this, the edginess of questions have helped my work more than the comfort of answers for as far as the eyes can see. A sheet of Arches Water Color Paper is as empty as space, it is clean and keeps no characters. Where then must the first mark be made? What should it look like? What color should it reveal, and what should it mean?