 Drawing 01·13·2021, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches What am I doing? I am looking carefully at the space between the lines, the negative space. I am filling the page with carefully considered forms, forms created by pencil lines. These lines, inherently, leave gaps between one another. These gaps are emotional spaces, ones that create light and darkness, good and evil. My current research is investigation into the emotional satisfaction, personal self-expression, that I may obtain from the space between the lines.
 Drawing 12·09·2020, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches  Drawing 12·05·2020 No.2 (state 2), pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The one from yesterday is more complex than I have recently desired. The one from December 5 got additions of the classic indications of space, i.e., a couple of straight lines. Both are studies in space and time; both have taught me places to go. (Methinks No.2 will get one more shift today — No.2 has become a lesson in simple, linear spatial indicators.)
 Drawing 09·30·2020 No.1, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches  Drawing 09·30·2020 No.2, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches The vertical line at the top of first drawing did not appear in its first draft. As is my custom, at the end of my work day I placed the new drawings in a plastic frame, leaned them against my work wall, sat on a stool, contemplated them amongst the best of my recent drawings. This one, No.1 from yesterday, begged a line for completion. It required a line that designated left from right, simultaneously defined a corner of the imaginary wall that defines the space in which these forms sit. What a difference a line makes!
 "Burnt Norton" (2018 No.8, state 19), oil on canvas, 63x66 inches {"What might have been is an abstraction; Remaining a perpetual possibility; Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory." -T.S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton"}  Drawing 10·27·2018, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches Jumping into a pit of obstacles, hazards and rewards, is the means to success in sport and in art-making. I found I can act well when challenged by multiple possibilities, some leading to success, some leading to failure. This is problem solving. This is the activity of art-making. This is the activity of sport. Art is engineering and athletics combined. It is physical, and it is mental. Yesterday I leaped into a drawing. For a while I felt lost. I had created many possibilities. For a while it felt confusing and chaotic. There were moments when I thought it best to abandon the drawing. I did not. I was rewarded. I found order within the chaos I had launched. This success by challenge is a great thing; it brings vitality. If the result is success, then trust in one's abilities are bolstered. More challenge will follow. It is a practice I will continue.
Burnt Norton is now very close to complete. The tweak is on! Burnt Norton shall now be completed with minor alterations in color, line, and form.  "Weoman" (2018 No.3; state 4), oil on canvas, 35x42 inches ("I could not get a rhyme for Roman, And was obliged to call it Weoman." -Marjorie Fleming, "Sonnet")  Drawing 05·22·2018, pencil on paper, 16x20 inches Today I admit to photoshop alteration. For the first time I have done research using the tools of the photo enhancement computer program Photoshop. In the painting, Weoman, I altered the left side because I could see changes a-coming that I had not yet accomplished in the studio. The changes seen here will occur immediately upon my working on this painting. This will happen later today. So, I am not fooling you. I admit, I did work digitally on this painting. The manual work upon it will soon match the changes you see here. It will be slightly different, and much better, than what I was able to accomplish with Photoshop.
Yesterday's drawing continues my complex research into an enhanced sense of value, form, line, and compositional structure. I believe yesterday's drawing is a very good drawing. It is predecessor to great work. My process is undergoing transformation. Process change is leading to image change. The profundity of my work is climbing a hill, moving up, moving toward maximization of my human possibilities; all in a time of superheroes!  Drawing 11·21·2017, pencil on paper, 20x16 inches This morning The New Yorker sent an email to all its subscribers with the cartoon I reproduce below. It is apt in many ways. It relates to our society, but also embraces the constant internal arguments I have. Only I get me, and I don't completely get me. That is the major reason I make art. It is also the reason my work bounces around in search for consistent, relentless truth. Can any human endeavor find absolute truth? I think there are absolute truths, like honesty. However, complex endeavors, like making art, do not easily reveal absolute truth. Thus comes my drawings, one simple, the next complex. There are those that are dominated by lines and those that are dominated by hard core black graphite. Yesterday's drawing exhibits the blackest I can get with that pencil of mine.    Yesterday was enjoyment in my studio behavior. There is a long distance risk in Drawing No.1, and an overall quest for harmony, despite a clogging of forms, in Drawing No.2. Both drawings play well with values, and also with variety in form and line. Compositions are energetically moving while secure in their rectangles.
   I know these reproductions look small on your screen ― don't forget to click on them for enlargement.
Yesterday's drawings appear to be about the artifice of space. I am questioning its possibilities. Unusual in the first drawing is the direction of light (usually I rake it from right to left, but in this one the light crosses diagonally, from lower left). The second drawing plays with line leading to forms, front to back. The lighting in the second drawing is neither important or interesting (it is the contrast in values and shapes that are interesting). The third drawing swoops the forms from front to back, rotating them in space as if on a diagonal arc. So, yes, these drawings vary in their questions about structure. I am exploring the emotional and intellectual affects of invented forms in three-dimensional space. This 3D space is, of course, artificially depicted on two-dimensional pieces of paper.  Drawing-08·04·2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches It feels good to run into this without knowing where it's going. More precisely, I am following the lead of positive intuitive feedback. It is a feedback loop, not unlike one experienced with a microphone and an electrical audio amplifier. It is getting louder and louder, squealing in pleasure and pain. I am "getting real" with myself. If I have learned anything from my recent activity, it is that I enjoy moving my line across invented forms. If this is methodology, it is one of discovery of form through seek and find by line.
 Drawing-05·30·2015, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches This drawing took me nearly four hours to complete. It is filled with normalcy and abnormality. Nobody has a nose like the man's, but the breast of the woman looks familiar. And so it goes — I am testing the waters of abstraction versus traditional figuration. For me, this is becoming a forever problem. Besides my addressing this issue of abstract forms versus more naturally derivative forms, I would like to point out the complexity of this drawing's space. The drawing, after all, is on a two dimensional piece of paper. Wandering through its space is a deceit, driven by form, perspective, light and shadow, and line. In this drawing, and in the drawing reproduced in my previous blog post, I have used lines to create surface values which simultaneously drive and animate space. The easiest place to see this occur is on the top of the box on which the woman sits.
It is important to me that you look carefully at one minor element: the woman's left hand. I drew that over and over, till it felt right, at least five times. |
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June 2021
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