exploring functional forms

summertime plein air

When the weather gets good, the pochade box comes out.

drawings from life

I’ve been going through notebooks, gathering together observational drawings made while out and about. Why be out in the world and draw what one sees? When I touch pen to paper, I enter a different kind of mind space. But the approach makes a difference too. Observational drawing may live in the front of my mind while more intuitive modes light up other areas. Or, it feels that way.

I can’t say I’m always very relaxed when I draw observationally—but I am in motion, and somehow that makes the experience tolerable until I’ve arrived at an outcome. Is it the outcome, then, that makes me want to return to the exercise? I’m not so sure—because I can recall other times where the drawing has had a soothing effect. Once, in a lecture hall, listening to the most awkward speaker, drawing the audience around me was the only way I could sit through the discomfort of the moment.

John Berger writes: “A moment has, for a moment, been saved… Is it possible to send promises backwards?” (p. 23 Bento’s Sketchbook) Am I trying to get my arms around a fleeting thing? I used to call these drawing artifacts “research”—of what? For what? I am remembering that Marion Milner also writes of “noticing what one is noticing”. I will try to find those words and add them here…

small moves in a pandemic summer

There's ash on the leaves of the hedge beyond the window. So fine and light between the fingers. The rancid stench of smoke is everywhere. Even after the fires are done, it will linger, they say. For months, they say. My late-spring vegetable starts stay too long in their containers and wilt. Between April and July, I do no painting or drawing or writing or sculpting. I become very, very still. Like prey camouflaging itself in tall grass, waiting for the threat to pass. Chris changes jobs. I obsess over the news: the numbers that keep rising, and grief so large and so hot—processing it feels like trying to swallow the sun. I do the laundry. I try to track down TP and soap. I brush the dog and think about what to cook. But it's still there. The sky becomes so clear, so quiet, and everything feels dangerous. A primal need for water seizes me. I fantasize about the ocean, swimming out, boundless. I watch countless shark videos on youtube. I learn yellow is the only color sharks can see, but am otherwise not reassured. We start making pizza at home every Friday night. I pour wine and turn the whole thing into an elaborate affair. The neighbors gather for their happy-hour and I hear their chatter outside, but I never join them because they don't wear masks and it is too much to listen so intimately to the problems of strangers right now and that makes me ashamed. I bring home a box of Japanese vegetables and then I cry. The owners of the farm where it came from are in their nineties. I wonder if my hair is falling out again. Christina pours half her wine bottle into a mason jar and delivers it to my porch with our favorite truffle potato chips. We share the wine and chips and spend the afternoon together on zoom while she bakes and I look up ingredient substitutions and we do our best lopsided impersonation of Summertime. I am washing my hands so often. I am worrying about fascism so often. When a friend's twin boys leave home for college, I dream about lending her a blue suitcase. The stifling heat of August arrives. Our old walls rumble and creak as a storm moves through one night. Chris thinks we should sleep downstairs, but I reassure him and we stay up late to marvel at each crash of thunder and lightning. Later we eat breakfast on our tiny stoop, intoxicated by the dewey breeze. The sky drizzles and clouds groan distantly, lazily. The world looks greener. I feel a sharp mixture of relief and longing. I realize I haven't hugged my friends in 6 months.