In the water too long

Turning one drawing into another.

a la Vija Celmins

OK so I didn't spend days and days on this seascape... and I'm too interested in the ink pen I was using – how its quirks (blotches, scrapes, skips and drags) pretty much created the illusion of water without any real intent on my part.
This week I'm experiencing discovery: I draw and draw and draw and stuff, sometimes really cool stuff, happens.

If you're not familiar with Vija, check her out: www.pbs.org/art21/artists/celmins/index.html

This or that

Repetition of form and ritual mark- making yield sci-fi landscape ... or saddle horns ... or anthills ...
I'm coming to appreciate the subtle changes that occur with a finicky ink pen: holes, blotches, waves and scribbles – the unintentional – or so I say.

Winter stillness

I spent a lot of time this week driving on slick and snowy roads in upstate New York. Yikes.
When my flight home was canceled I found myself with a day to draw. Here's one piece illustrating the slip slide-y-ness of their first winter storm. I remember why I don't live there anymore.
The overwhelming whiteness and quiet drove me to work close to the paper and feel every line. They were great conditions for drawing.

Just keep working

Carrying on. I experimented with blackening in yesterday's drawing, but decided against it. Bowing to the possibility that I don't know how everything is supposed to turn out.
This one? I dunno yet. I'm still not getting at the 'thing' I'm looking for.

Red light

I've been trying to stop before a drawing is done. Check back tomorrow to see how it all works out.

Experiment, experience

Today I find myself making this drawing I didn't know I would make, or even like... Yesterday I discovered something that worked in the skeleton drawing – conflicting directions that I usually intuitively avoid. But it worked, in a way I couldn't see before. So, the next thing I know it's creeping into other drawings. Is it workin', not workin', I dunno.
Hal is back home from hiking in Colorado, conquering great high altitudes and being changed by the experience. The mountain is in him now (Mount Elbert), from his feet through his calves and thighs and body and into his heart.
I'm thinking about how experience shapes us. My experience of being home this time, looking within; his of being out on the mountain top, looking within.

Cycling

Fall continues to claim small living things, drying and scattering seed. We've had so little rain here, the process seems accelerated – too soon and too fast. I am resigned.

Night sky

Here it is after all.

Laundromat drawing

Today was such a good day. I finished a huge project that had taken up most of the summer. Delivered the CD and brushed myself off. Took a nap, grilled salmon for dinner, drew this picture while the laundry was cookin'. I thought it was about a nighttime sky... but then it sort of erupted.

Rabbit with its head ripped off

I'm reading that massive biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, A Life, by Roxana Robinson. Can you tell?
And I'm thinking that I've been born into the wrong generation, way way too late. The ideas that preoccupy me, the quest for something more substantial in my world, the desire to simplify and let go of materialism, the need to find a place in the world not separate from all other existence, the insistence on spirit and meaning in art ... I find that it all was defined by, oh, about 1912 (Kandinsky, Dow etc.).
Have I never had an original idea? Have I never made work that hasn't been made before? Bah.
I am just another artist seeking meaning and balance in the physical world by looking inward. We need it now as they needed it in 1912. Georgia worked hard, says Robinson, to finally find her own way, her own voice in response.
Where is my way? Where is yours?

Resist/accept

Deathing or birthing? Pulling away from life or just growing into it. Ganglia drying up and forgetting or root system reaching deeper into the earth.
Summer is winding down and I see changes in the landscape, every living thing seems to turn inward: drying, conserving, introspective. Wait, it can't be over. I'm not ready, I haven't ________ (fill in the blank).

Ouch

Worked this image and then worked it again, trying for that fine edge... existence and tension and balance without anything ponderous or weighty. Humor and sex are just bonus.

Air and distance

Looking into a small physical world. No, wait, a really huge expanding physical world puts air and distance between us.
I have a friend who, on seeing 'What the Bleep do We Know?', was taken by the idea that we – everything – are made up mostly of space. Lots of space even within the pieces that make up the tiniest atom. My sister commented that we, as we age and the universe pushes out and away while we do so, are left to ourselves... Is youth a time for connections, in biological, social and whatever ways? And middle age for introspection, stillness, clarity? I'm OK with that, as long as we don't get too cranky or needy.
I was experimenting with cropping this drawing in a severe way – coming down from the top to blot out the sky was claustrophobic; up from the bottom was sort of threatening too, exposed and vulnerable. In the end I left it. Edges lifted by a slight humorous breeze.

Labor Day weekend

Upstate New York over the weekend: meditating in my sister's garden beside the creek. Sunlight filtered through trees, flies buzzing in my ears. Breathe deeply. All my drawings seem to be about aging, time and how living things cycle through... leaves already turning, insects rushing through their short lives to mate and die. Inevitable seasons. Pick the last tomato off the vine.

Spider web

Morning and I've been sitting outside, listening to the cicadas and emptying my cluttered head. I made a few drawings and suspect them of resembling bits of leaves and seeds and insect found all around here in myriad spider webs. In the past week or so, Hal has liberated two huge and beautiful dragonflies that were snatched out of flight in high webs between the pine trees. We discovered them just dangling in thin air...
I also found cosmos blooming in my late-planted wildflower garden. It's a good day.

Dusting off the cobwebs

How can it be almost three weeks since I last posted a drawing???!!
How can it be two weeks since I last made a drawing???!!
I wish I could say it was summer easy livin' but its not, just plain old too much work to do for money and feeling sapped of anything bordering on a good idea...
I drew this yesterday in a meeting when I should have been paying more attention, but was thinking about nuts and berries.
But, I look forward to mid-September when I finish up one of my big projects and begin story boarding a new animation. Until then, I vow to get back on track here, updating this blog that helps make me feel whole. Ciao.

I am counting my breaths

And this ...

Yippee. We've got reason to celebrate.

Ahhhh ...

That's better.
To look back over this body of work, one could conclude, and rightfully so, that I struggle for balance ... between the dense and the minimal, between the inner and outer worlds, between clutter-mind and no-mind.
But it's transformation that I seek. I want nothing less than release from the heaviness of the physical world. I want a soaring spirit; a broad view of the universe; a path with no beginning and no end, that is not leading anywhere special. Simple existence.
What's different about making a drawing like this? It's quickly made, without second thought. And what's it about? Um, waiting to see the doctor, glancing up at his fish tank from time to time.