The Topography of a Page

Something that's been on my mind for a good two or three years now is the idea of paper as a landscape. Just like the hills and valleys of a city, I wonder what the citizens and growths of a page are. I get kind of weird, I guess, about relishing in the dips and dry ravines of a crinkled piece of paper. Hovering my hand above the surface of a page, and feeling it's jagged peaks and shadowy creases is such an intimate experience---it teaches me things I couldn't learn anywhere else.

This picture was made by crumbling a textured gray paper, then slowly scratching curves into it's waxy surface with a salad fork, then cutting lines and shapes from both sides with an Xacto knife. A few accents in value were made with a white charcoal pencil. 

The actual mark-making didn't take long to make, but I've been learning how to make those marks and how to apply and combine them for about three years. I love making colorless impressions on a page that only show up when turned just so into the light, or when they become a bowl of shadows or a belly on the backside of the page. I love making both sides of the paper become the backside and the frontside---making them interact, and creating a dialogue between the two.

I'm always amazed how so many pictures can be more than the sum of their parts, a pictorial synergy of sorts. It shows that I love the process, but the actual making of a picture is just as appealing to me as the finished piece.

Wild Horses

Detail from "Wild Horses"

Before I put anything down on paper and pictures are still sorts of ideas in my head, I think they sometimes look like the picture above---a mess of details, specific shapes and colors, but no apparent object or message. 

It's always a tough decision for me to take that messy picture in my head in only one of two directions: I could stop there, and flesh out the beautiful shapes I see, and the layering of textures and colors, loving the process as I create, and how the marks make a picture all their own. It's a pretty new way of doing the same thing I've done all my life. 

I remember even back in third grade I'd draw some creature I made up. Something with a big, heavy body, then long arms and a goofy face. "What is it?" Someone would ask. "Just something I made up," I'd say. And that was usually the end of the conversation. "Can you draw a Panda Bear?" And I'd draw a happy-go-lucky Panda.

In junior high when the same thing would happen ("What is it?" "It's just that---I made it up."), and someone would ask "Can you draw me?" I'd either feel like I had to prove that I could draw (because, obviously, drawing things that were made up didn't really prove anything about my drawing skills) and I'd end up only getting a partial portrait done in class, or I'd draw them as a sort of cartoon, and then they'd be offended. "What'd I do?" I'd ask myself. I'd never ask the offended what was wrong, because everyone thought it was obvious, too. "I don't get it."

Of course I didn't entirely "make up" the creatures I drew. I thought I was just making them up, but I only knew to draw a feathery wing on a slithery back, because I'd seen a feathery wing and a slithery back before. Not together, of course, but I subconciously put big and small pieces of other things together to make something new. 

This picture is the same kind of thing. I've taken elements used in all sorts of artwork: faint lines, bold lines, pencil lines, pen lines, areas of textured paint, torn pieces of colored paper, imprints on the page, etc. These are techniques used by artists of "realism" to make a face, or a flower, a dog, or a bowl of fruit. This picture is a celebration of shapes, symbols, values, composition and exploration. I love sharing the process of an image, because so much of the process is usually hidden in a picture. For me, the process shows that the picture was made by a person. It shares a sense of time and movement. This picture seems more alive to me than others.

When I have this mess of imagery and excitement inside me, that wants to become a picture, I could choose to celebrate the parts, or I could develop it a different way and find other connections between the parts---what object do these pieces make together? And then I usually end up with a figurative picture, or a story of some sort.

I love that, even though the only recognizable figure in this picture is a pink horse, there is still a story and several figures in this picture. I can't escape 'em! 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Wild Horses" is the first in a series of images I'm going to be making prints from. I'm on the lookout for high quality print presses, that use archival inks and papers. I want to share a personal experience with everyone that wants to see it, or have their own copy.

"Wild Horses" was made on my front porch, in the wind, with my boy, using: charcoal pencils, gouache, crayons, tracing paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens, ink, glue, scrapbook paper, erasers and tape. It was made on 7x9" Fabriano artist paper, mounted on mat board.

Opening Reception

WEDNESDAY APRIL 9, 6-8pm at UVSC's Art Wall (across the hall from the UVSC bookstore in the Student Center). FOOD! MUSIC! PICTURES!

Andy Bean's woodblock prints and Jess Smiley's primitive drawings combine forces in We Want Our Friends Back! Its monsters and cavemen! Cannibals and mermaids! Priests and pyramids! Come see for yourself, okay?

Figgers

I'm working on all sorts of primitive imagery and these are some figures from the "project". Some are drawn with my left hand, some are drawn holding the marker with my fist instead of fingers, some were drawn upside-down.
=============================
I remember, as a kid, there was something deep down inside the drawing that I was attached to. Something that was found in the colours and lines and textures, but also something else---outside of those things. I think part of it was the newness of the whole thing. Testing a pencil on paper and seeing what happened. Its easier now to make calculated lines, but maybe they aren't as packed with life as when lines were new.
=============================
These drawings are some tokens of me approaching drawing as something new.