Another Family Portrait

The snapshot was taken on the event of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, in June of 1999. They are both still living, as are all the rest of us, a major miracle—I sometimes think—given the odds. We, the children, are arranged from youngest on the left to the oldest. Yours truly is second from the top:

And here is the sketchbook version (from memory):

And another, more characteristic grouping of the same gang:

I believe the overwhelming pressures of growing up in this chaos has made a profound impact on the art I make. It often feels as though I am perpetually untangling a big mess. It's not always clear what generates the imagery, although sometimes I am caught up short by the obviousness of a particular piece. 

Chicken/Egg

Growing up in a large family leaves indelible psychic traces which emerge spontaneously from time to time. In my case, it often makes for claustrophobic imagery that took me a long time to figure out. The blockprint was made in 1994 when I still had a little Vandercook in my studio, and making prints was as easy as drawing. A couple of summers ago, I was going through family pictures and found a group shot from 1985. For some reason my mother is not present, but it does show my father with all ten of us plus three spouses and two babies. I had no (conscious) memory of the snapshot when I did the print.

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