Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Writers
2008-04-12 04:30:22 | The Star Magnolia
Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000) The Star Magnolia As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month. I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed. Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session. I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition. During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new ...Read More
2008-01-06 02:09:46 | Stars
James Gordon Irving, Front and Back Cover of Stars: A Golden Nature Guide, Herbert S. Zim, author, St. Martin’s Press, New York. Originally published by Golden Books, this paperback edition published 1956, 1951. Stars. My own copy of this book worn from love and misuse is pictured here. When I was young it taught me the patterns of the constellations, their names, the movement of the sun, phases of the moon, and other celestial and planetary phenomena. This knowledge still informs my work. Artist James Gordon Irving’s images were seminal; his pervasive indigo night and passion for geometry certainly influenced me. I see a clear echo in my print Pegasus, for example. However, rather than articulating the mechanics of the heavens as Irving did, I have leaned towards imaging fictions; or at least the houses of the sky beside the ones we build on the ground. Above all this book sparked a love of the miniature collection. Here the largest things you can think of: planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae are compressed into a tiny volume; a universe that you can slip into your pocket – like a journal. James Gordon Irving, Auroras or Northern Lights from Stars: A Golden Nature Guide, Herbert S. Zim, author, St. Martin’s Press, New York. Originally published by Golden Books, this paperback edition published 1956, 1951. ...Read More
2007-12-30 07:37:02 | Picturing the Place We Can't Reach
Blue Twilight, 1996-1997, graphite, watercolor, pastel, conté crayon, and litho crayon, 22 x 30″ Dreams are pure imagination. By transcribing them I attempt to give shape to what never really was. With painting I probe visual experience, uncertain and ephemeral. A favorite book, Le Grande Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier recounts a young man’s search to return to a world he stumbled upon while lost in a wood. Deeply atmospheric passages follow his quest for the unattainable; for what might well have been a dream. This is what the chase of art feels like to me. I see a blue light and seek a path to it. But which blue light? What did I see? I conjure multiple observations; snippets of reality and imagination to link to a phantom past. Such is the setting of my drawing, Blue Twilight (above). My artistic practice is based on longing for a place I haven’t really known. Study for Blue Twilight, journal entry dated 1 July 1995, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 6 x 4 inches. ...Read More