#11

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#10

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#9

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Website Update

I've finally completed processing most of the 2009 work and it is posted to my website. It comprises a mix of large & small, mostly works on paper—some could be described as sketches or studies. Click HERE

#8

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#7

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#6

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We interrupt this program...

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or, HOW I LEARNED TO DRAW

Leafing through a recently-unearthed folder of childhood drawings, I found these, which illustrate early influences on my artistic career. They were made when I was four years old, and I have distinct memories of drawing on the back sides of the paper my father brought home from work. In the early fifties—in fact, not until computers and the "paperless" workplace—a single sheet of plain paper, unmarked on either side, was a special luxury for most children. There just wasn't that much stuff around, and we practiced adaptive reuse as a matter of course.

My father worked as a scientist for the Atomic Energy Commission and its logo (if one can so dignify that pedestrian mark) featured strongly in my early memories. I drew pictures constantly and AEC was always up there in the corner of the page. There were lots of pages with formulas & charts which included hand-written symbols because the typewriters of that era had no such special keys. The typist left spaces blank and the author filled in the symbols by hand. So, I copied the forms of these symbols. I actually remember doing this and also remember making pages and pages of "fake" writing in my pre-literate years. It was a heady time, writing like a grownup, without the constraint of having to make any sense out of it. Pure expression. Sort of like the "fake language" in Frank O'Hara & Alfred Leslie's movie The Last Clean Shirt.

And I remember becoming bleakly depressed when I actually learned to read and discovered how slow and stupid it all was when it had to make sense. It's for this reason that I do not support aggressive early-literacy campaigns. Given an adequately literate environment, I think most children will read and write when they are ready. To push them into literacy too early deprives them of important time to develop their personal imagination and compounds the depression which naturally accompanies maturational milestones. Well, this gets me into a rant about television, "groupthink", and Sesame Street in particular, which is not where I wanted to go this morning. It will have to wait for a more thought-out post. Stay tuned

#5

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#4

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#3

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#2

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Happy New Year, 2010!

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