Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Uncategorized
2011-10-17 10:20:02 | Video Walkthrough of Dust and Shade: Drawings by Charles Ritchie Exhibition
A Saturday morning visit to Philadelphia afforded this six-minute look at drawings and journals in theGallery Joe installation (click arrow). ...Read More
2009-09-02 18:07:10 | A Summer Place
Beach Worktable 2006 Beach Bulletin Board 2006 Each summer I return to the family beach house in North Carolina for a few weeks, and for as long as I can remember I’ve set up studio in an upper room where I continue working on my drawing and print projects. The new setting invariably helps me rethink my current investigations while infusing my journal with new influences and energies. The temporary studio is really just a corner of a room; a worktable, a chair, and a single bed where I prop my books and spread out my brushes and other tools. I always pull out two bulletin boards that are tucked in the closet and hang them on either side of my table; it is to these cork boards I pin up my projects in order to muse on them in a different light. As I work, I occasionally drift through a stack of art postcards brought from home; handfuls pulled randomly from my collections. I slowly sort through the images; selecting ones that strike my fancy, placing them on the boards in arrangements I like. Postcards of masterworks that I’ve passed over in previous years may suddenly grab my interest. The process is done in a very relaxed manner with the basic goal being to enjoy myself while taking in fresh ideas and information. In recent years I’ve begun to take photographs of my studio setup as I conclude my summer stay. Above can be seen images from the summer of 2006, a period when I was working on the copper plate for my print Night II. I was steadily scraping and reworking the already etched plate with burnishers and scalpels. As I developed the surface, I compared it to the proof impression that I had brought with me. It was a period when I was working towards a final state of the print that was to be published later that year. The studio of summer 2009 can ...Read More
2009-06-21 06:28:37 | Erasing
(above): Spring Twilight, graphite on Fabriano paper, (work in progress) with (from left) sanding block, plastic eraser with cut fragment, hard gray grinding eraser, white plastic eraser refill and electric eraser. Erasing In the early 1950’s, upstart artist Robert Rauschenberg arrived at the door of one of the preeminent figures in painting at the time, Willem DeKooning. Rauschenberg went with the idea of asking DeKooning for a drawing, not to acquire but one to erase. DeKooning, a bit wary, decided to go along, and came forward with a heavily worked sheet; a drawing that was going to be hard to obliterate, and one he was going to miss. The younger artist spent about a month and myriad erasers of all kinds taking the crayon, grease pencil, ink, and graphite drawing back to white paper, leaving only a ghost of the original image. Rauschenberg framed the drawing and labeled it with the title: Erased DeKooning Drawing. There are many things to which I respond in Rauschenberg’s action; but what consistently resounds is that Rauschenberg took the concept of erasing to its positive limit: erasing can be a creative force, a tool for making and not just for eliminating. While I’ve come to view erasers from that perspective, in my youth I believed that erasers save us from mistakes. In drawing classes I heard the teacher say, use the eraser as much as the pencil, but it took me years to unplug from the attitude I was fixing my drawing. In recent years, working in graphite with greater frequency has helped me cultivate a broader, more sophisticated use of the eraser. In the studio I use plastic erasers almost all the time. The Staedtler Mars Plastic works beautifully for my purposes and I often cut the eraser into small chunks shaping it to specific cleanup areas. ...Read More
2008-07-13 05:34:17 | Guitar Lessons
Charles Ritchie, Guitar, 1992-1994, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, private collection Guitar Lessons For many years I have played guitar; it is a satisfying part of my creative practice. One step away from the drawing table and I’m in a completely different zone; working in patterns on a field of time; focusing on completely different visual, tactile, and aural sensations than working with watercolor and brush. Even a short session away with the guitar returns me to the drawing table with fingers, eyes, and mind realigned and re-sensitized. I’m a self taught rhythm guitar player, so I welcomed the opportunity to take some lessons from a professional; something I assumed would be instantly gratifying and quickly lift me into a different plane of playing. How wrong I was. I immediately discovered what a hole I had dug playing alone in the studio over the years. Sliding beats, fuzzed out notes; I had settled into a pattern of sloppy strumming and improvisation without accountability. It became clear by the end of the first session I was going to have to begin again. So, in response, rather than the busy strums I’ve packed into each measure I’m stripping down to a single chord per beat; playing only the downbeat. I check each note for clarity; how it sounds on its own, how it sounds in relation to the whole. When collaborating with my teacher I now listen beyond my playing; what is my partner doing? Where is he in the music? Where might he want to go? How is my part serving his part? The experience reminds me of making prints at Center Street Studio this past May. There, with my partner Jim, I found myself responding to what was happening with the printmaking process. When the photographic didn’t serve us properly, I drew the imag ...Read More
2008-06-01 06:02:24 | Turning Pages: Part 1
Turning Pages: Part 1 below: Page: Interior with Stack of Journals (unfinished first version), 2007-2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″ For several years I have been working on a group of drawings called Pages. These small watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink pieces have the same format as the pages in my sketchbook/journals. The 4 x 6” sheets often feel as if they were torn out of the books, but they weren’t. Created on 140 pound hot press Fabriano drawing paper, I mount these sheets to mat board using thin, narrow, double-stick tape (3M #415). Stretched on boards, I tend to work these pieces for months and years. When complete, the drawings are detached from the tape and mat board and live as independent works; framed or unframed. Each Page is a palimpsest as well. I inscribe thoughts that occur to me as I work; usually plans for developing the drawings, but often times dreams and dream fragments that come back to me during my early morning drawing sessions that develop in states of awakening. The inked inscription that completes the drawing, and usually obliterates the previous pencil writing, revisits a particularly potent dream that has occurred to me during the months that I worked on that drawing. Many Pages progress simultaneously. Most are seasonal and are linked to changes in the appearance of my subject. I put the drawings away for winter and bring them out for summer (or vice versa). One of the Pages that I started last spring is presented above. I am revisiting the concept now the leaves have returned. Dissatisfied with the drawing when last season ended, I have abandoned work on that sheet. During the execution of the drawing I noticed the paper had lost its sizing, meaning that the page was soaking color like a sponge (see not ...Read More