Drawing: Antony Gormley

“What is drawing?” artist and sculptor Antony Gormley asks in his prologue to Drawing: Antony Gormley. “What does it take to draw?” This book, the first to provide a complete overview of four decades of Gormley’s drawing practice, offers a window into his vision and working methods from 1980 to the present. His drawings—­produced mostly at night, when “it is easier to withdraw into the inner realm”—represent experimental journeys of the soul, providing an intimate counterpoint to his landmark installations.

Drawing: Antony Gormley is an alternative chronology of the creative output of one of the most critically respected artists working today, told through forty years of work for which he is less well known and now more closely revealed in this volume. The drawings are organized into themes—from “Early Drawings” and “Loose Earth” to “Cosmic” and “Learning to Think”—­and punctuated with thoughts and reflections by Gormley, in his own words.

New essays by novelist Jeanette Winterson, art historian W. J. T. Mitchell, art theorist Margaret Iversen, and mycologist Merlin Sheldrake also provide thought- provoking and sometimes soul-­stirring responses to Gormley’s work. This book offers an accessible overview of his drawings, providing creative inspiration to those who would like to pick up a pen—or linseed oil, or milk, or blood, all of which Gormley has used—­for the first time, or anyone setting off on a journey “into the unarmed parts of our internal landscape, or out into the unknown.” After all, as Gormley reminds us, “a day passed without drawing is a day lost.”