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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Landscapes | Seascapes

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Ash Wednesday

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Fat Tuesday

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This ink sketch on acetate was used to make a small silkscreen which was later colored with pencil and watercolor. I did a fairly large edition of variations, but threw out all but this one.

I never got around to using the drawing below for anything further. They were both part of a series of garden images which I originally intended to develop into paintings on canvas. Other projects got in the way. Maybe someday...I doubt it, though.

Poppies

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Two sketches of poppies: on the left, a California poppy, on the right, an ordinary red field poppy.

Fanny and Alexander

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John Tallman's' Blog ColorChunks is a rare treat. Today, he featured a still taken from Bergman's movie about his childhood in Sweden. I loved that film because it reminded me of all the stories I heard growing up of my father's childhood in Europe before the wars. Bergman also filmed a version of The Magic Flute, which was pure magic; it had a sweet dense color, slightly hazy. But the picture above seems to be a kind of dream view of a proscenium from the first balcony, reminiscent of a Mozart opera in period costume. Perhaps I was thinking of that Magic Flute, but it actually feels more like this production of Così fan Tutte starring a young Susan Graham and the magnificent English soprano Susan Chilcott who, tragically, died only a few years after it was made. Così, as a story, doesn't make a lick of sense but it is all about human frailty and there is no greater ensemble singing anywhere, ever. This is Mozart at his most sublime.

Valentine's Day

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The blue drawing of my left hand was done when I was fifteen. I drew what I saw back then and used myself as a model. What I didn't realize is that I had been doing it since I could pick up a crayon. The other drawing, recently unearthed, was made when I was four years old and its odd perspective makes me think of how foreshortening looks, but I know for certain that I was unable to understand, let alone execute, concepts like that until at least the third grade.




This being Valentine's Day, I should have saved the hearts from last week to post today, but alas. All you get is hands. Hands and Hearts.

Saturday Morning

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This last one is clearly a landscape of an imaginary place (village, town?).

Untitled

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Some Heads

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I'm not sure this last one is figurative at all; it does seem to share the same palette as the one above. Again, no telling when any of these was made.

Snow Day

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Figure Study

Probably from around the mid-90s through 1997-ish. Most of my diaries are not dated and because of the water media, I often keep several going concurrently as they sit around waiting to dry before I can turn the page. So, there might be work several years apart on successive pages. Even a dated page is no real clue, as I may have abandoned that book for a long time and picked up another. I also work from both ends of the book. Themes and methods recur. I use these sketchbooks to stay as loose and non-judgmental as I can. My "serious" work is usually filled with meticulous, complicated detail. Some would say "overwrought", but actually, the medium is the message and whatever the ostensible subject, they are usually about the complicated encumbrances of life.

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Tuesday Morning

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Monday morning

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El Corazon

One of the exciting things about combing through decades-old sketchbooks and drawing diaries is finding common themes and ideas. I'm not sure when any of these was made, but they are clearly related.

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Saturday Night

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Pets

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Molly, our cat, was sick then. She died at 13 after a couple of years with diabetes. She was often miserable and angry. But we loved her dearly.

More Fake Writing

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Fake Writing

Apropos of my earlier post.

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