Khairul Anuar Jalal - Current Working Process

CURRENT PROCESS : Automatic figuration

From Echo Form to Automatic Figuration

My current practice developed from my earlier Echo Form and superposition technique. In Echo Form and superposition, I deliberately layered multiple positions, expressions and possibilities within a single figure.

I have since moved away from constructing these layers intentionally. Instead I believe my concept have matured by turning to automatic drawing, allowing uncontrolled marks to cover the canvas. And through pareidolia, I search within these marks for faces, bodies and characters that I did not plan beforehand.I describe this development as Automatic Figuration.

Although I no longer use Echo Form as a technique, its influence remains. Figures still overlap, merge and contain multiple possible expressions and identities. The difference is that these possibilities are now discovered through chance rather than deliberately constructed, like a dream with no heads or tail.

AUTOMATIC FIGURATION

I use the term Automatic Figuration to describe my process of allowing human forms and psychological possibilities to emerge from automatic marks.

Rather than beginning with a predetermined figure, I begin with uncertainty. Through observation and pareidolia, I discover figures within the marks and gradually construct their possible psychological states.

The process allows the act of painting to mirror something I experience in everyday life: noticing, interpreting and imagining the people around me.

Process Matters

For me, the process of making a painting is more important than the final image. The canvas becomes a space where I can reenact an everyday human activity: becoming aware of other people and imagining the possibilities that surround them.

As an introvert, this awareness can begin in different ways—observing someone from a distance, being in close proximity to someone, or anticipating someone I may come across. Without necessarily interacting with them, I may begin imagining their mood, personality, thoughts or possible behaviour. This becomes a way of mentally preparing myself for the uncertainty of other people and possible social interaction.

I recreate this psychological process through the act of painting. I begin with automatic drawing, without knowing what or who will appear. Through pareidolia, I search the unpredictable marks for unfamiliar figures. As they emerge, I imagine different expressions, actions and psychological states before gradually developing and combining these possibilities into visible forms.

The finished painting is therefore not the main objective. What matters most is repeatedly going through this process of uncertainty, observation, imagination and interpretation. The painting is what remains afterwards—a diary-like record of a psychological process I have enacted on the canvas.

01 — Automatic Drawing

" Influenced by Surrealist automatism, I allow the marks to develop without consciously deciding what they should become."

Beginning without a fixed image

The first layer is made through spontaneous drawing. Lines overlap, cross and interrupt one another without following a prepared composition.

Rather than using the drawing to illustrate an idea I already have, I use it to create uncertainty. Influenced by Surrealist automatism, I allow the marks to develop without consciously deciding what they should become. This gives me something unfamiliar to respond to, similar to noticing unfamiliar people in everyday life without yet knowing how to interpret them.

I also relate this uncertainty to Søren Kierkegaard’s idea of the “dizziness of freedom of choices”—the uneasiness that comes from confronting multiple possibilities before a choice is made. On the canvas, the uncontrolled marks create these possibilities before I decide which forms to recognise and develop.

02 — Finding Figures

"This part of my process relates to an observation made by Leonardo da Vinci, who encouraged artists to look at stains on walls and patterns in stone and discover figures, faces, landscapes and other possibilities within their accidental forms."

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Finding Figures — Pareidolia

After the automatic drawing is complete, I spend time looking through the marks. Certain intersections begin to resemble eyes, mouths, heads or bodies. I follow these suggestions instead of correcting them into conventional anatomy.

This part of my process relates to an observation made by Leonardo da Vinci, who encouraged artists to look at stains on walls and patterns in stone and discover figures, faces, landscapes and other possibilities within their accidental forms. He considered this a way of stimulating the imagination and generating new inventions.

I use a similar act of looking through pareidolia. The figures are therefore not completely invented or planned; they emerge partly through chance and partly through what my mind chooses to recognise in the marks.

03 — Becoming one

" I begin to combine several of them into a single head or figure. "

Before

After these characters has been discovered and painted with different expressions, gestures and actions within the automatic marks, I begin to combine several of them into a single head or figure. Their features overlap and merge, allowing different expressions and actions to exist simultaneously within one character. This becomes a way of visualising the multiple psychological states I imagine a person might hold before their thoughts, emotions or intentions become clear.

After

Painting by hand

Painting by Hand

I paint primarily with my hands, using my fingers and palms as brushes. Working directly on the surface allows me to push, smear, drag and layer the paint without the distance of a conventional tool.

The hand gives me control, but never complete precision. A fingerprint, dragged edge or uneven pressure can alter a figure unexpectedly, giving me another mark to respond to.

This allows chance to remain present throughout the painting process. The work begins with marks I cannot fully predict, figures are discovered within them, and even while developing those figures, my hands continue to introduce unexpected possibilities.

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