This is a work that no longer exists and in fact only lasted for a few moments. The idea was to just play and get an interesting texture that might inspire a new work. I had just seen an exhibit of the French artist Yves Klein who in the 1960s did a series of canvases painted a very rich dark blue, like a slab of the ocean or sky  had been cut out and pasted on the museum walls. I wanted to have that feeling of vast space, a sky that might hint at the infinity that lies behind it. The black bar seemed necessary as a reference point since it feels so heavy and close, a step out to the deep beyond.  I worked up a rich impasto of many different blues and blended them together. I knew this was only the beginning but couldn’t think of what else do with it. The blue still looked flat with nothing in front of it.. I tried placing various objects: scissors, a glass bottle, a cigarette pack, etc. on  the canvas to see what the result would be. The pennies I thought especially looked good since their color contrasts with the blue. They look somewhat like a constellation of stars. Maybe the little angel is praying for some hard cash and having his wish granted. Since then this has turned into a more traditional landscape, which I will show at a later date.

Paper Bag

Okay you are probably thinking, enough of these charcoal renderings of every day objects. It was fun to draw something with so many nooks and crannies, like painting drapery folds in classic figure paintings must have been. It’s not like you can really get them wrong and there are lots of shadows and highlights to play with. Maybe this work is a little retro since most paper bags have advertising messages all over them. I remember many years ago that I heard that if you gave your full attention to something its true beauty would shine through, so I tried that on a paper bag and it worked. The bag began to glow like some burnished metal.  This drawing is in memory of that experience. After finishing this drawing, I thought about trying to draw a picture of a paper bag on a paper bag. Now how ironic would that have been? But it didn’t really work and I threw it out.

Empty Pot

Still working on charcoal drawings of everyday things. I chose this subject as an exercise on how closely I could control the dark tones. It takes a lot of cross hatching and rubbing to get a solid black. I used a chamois cloth and quickly rubbed in a light gray tone over the entire paper then worked or erased into that. The subject matter of this drawing seems to be the dark space within the pot than the pot itself, like it is some kind of Zen koan.

squeezed...

After finishing up with my one-man show in the first week of August, I felt energized and exhausted. I had a lot of ideas of how to move forward. Too many in fact. I felt stymied. In order to get back to basics I thought I would just focus on drawing for a while. Because of its permanent nature oil painting feels like making an important statement that needs to speak to all the painting that came before it and justify the hundreds of years it could stick around. Drawing however feels more like an exploration that can be picked up on a whim and disposed of without too much trouble. If I don’t like, toss it into recycling. I started by drawing simple objects around the house. This toothpaste tube seemed to speak to me, something of the loneliness and sadness it must feel being mauled and squeezed without much thought. Who knew it had so much to say? And I wouldn’t have heard it unless I drew it.