During Pandemic and during the crash of 2008 I turned to drawing as a form of psychic survival. Our current times echo the sense of upheaval I experienced then, and I have once again gathered my pencils and opened my Moleskine journals. In 2008 I drew tulips and convicted bankers, in Pandemic I drew locks, doors, and a tiny lightbulb made large, as though to clear a way through the darkness. The constant barrage of headlines from the Epstein files has created a sense of a world with too much malevolence to bear. And so I am drawing fragile things, the most fragile I can find: the shells of eggs, and nests. These subjects are phenomenally challenging, and symbolically healing. While I draw I must forget everything except the shape of light and how a line becomes a real thing, woven into a place of safety.
If you visited me now without warning you might think I had gone feral, as there are egg shells everywhere, placed so I can study how light moves across them throughout the day. Each time I draw I think I have never drawn before, and am convinced I have no idea how to do it. Each time I draw I am stunned that the pencil itself knows something, and it’s a matter, more than anything else, of pure, sensory observation: What is the sound of lead when it hovers above reflected light? What is the sound when it is pressed too hard and violates the grain of the paper? What happens when I step away and come back a day later? These drawings are made in very slow time. Each one evolves over several days, and as much happens when I am walking in the forest studying the shapes of trees as when I am appear to be “working.” [Read more…]
Chiaroscuro of the Garden