Onion

This week I've been thinking about the many facets of each of us ... some so private we don't show them to anyone. Other selves live inside of us, like fruit, or light. Conversely, like darkness, or ...
This, too, is a recurring theme in my work: Objects within objects; ideas within other ideas; the unintended arising from the deliberate.

Looking closely at my own skin

I'm surprised that more of my drawings aren't about pattern and texture. Skin cells, scales, bark and feathers for starters. Leaves collected on branches and silhouetted against the sky. Goat poop collected in limestone crevices.
Here's to the holiday weekend: naps in the hammock, grilling out with friends, lots of drawing.

Getting my hands dirty

Today I got out the graphite and paraffin... it was a beautiful day and I could work outside. What I envisioned was something simple, Zen-like. What I got was not that.
But the drawing I want sometimes occurs along the way while I'm drawing something else.
Still intrigued by what's underneath.

Two more tree drawings for the grid

It's not true that I stopped drawing ...

... but I stopped drawing well. For awhile. Today I'm trying to remember how.
I was out in the yard, digging up weeds and looking at clots of dirt, compost, bugs and sand and roots and sticks. I love springtime. It's been raining and the ground smells so alive.
My resolution to enter lots of shows this year is paying off... I'll have a drawing in the VMRC 2008 Exhibition in Harrisonburg in June; two pieces in the Bowery Gallery Annual Juried Exhibition in New York in July; and a big show at the Portlock Galleries in Chesapeake in January. So far, so good.
I better get busy.