Corn dance

After I rolled back up to the front door from a longish (22 miles is longish for me these days) bicycle ride this morning, I thought it would be a waste not to take advantage of the relatively tolerable temperature and easy light filtering through a soft cover of clouds. I hung my bike from its hook in the front outer hall, hung my cycling duds on the back of the bathroom door, quickly rinsed the sweat from my head over the tub, and threw on a worn out long sleeved white shirt and a pair of baggy jeans. With a fresh travel mug of hot coffee, I tossed my shoulder bag with a tin of colored pencils and my bigger sketch folio onto the back seat of the '78 Saab, rolled down all the windows (no air conditioning) and retraced the last couple miles of my bike route back to Trout Run Road. I slowly drove its length, winding down past White Oak Mill and across the little creek, turned around, and pulled the car off into the grass next to a towering wall of field corn.

Sitting down onto the ground with my back leaning against the driver's side door, I had to smile a little at how strange the scene might have looked to anyone driving past. A battered old Saab with a man sitting on the ground next to it, staring at a barrier of corn more than ten feet high right in front of him, blocking the pretty farm country scene. Doesn't he know that there's a lovely old mill just around the corner? At least that's more scenic if you're going to sit and look at something. (note: done that. See http://scottstultz.squarespace.com/drawings/white-oak-mill/). But these past couple weeks I've ridden my bike past miles and miles of lush corn fields shimmering in the July heat, and they've become interesting. Almost obsessively so. I've been wanting to take a crack at a drawing. Maybe a series.

This is an example of what I privately (until just now sharing it with you) think of as a macho drawing exercise. No, not detailed drawings of voluptuous nude women. Deliberately making myself draw something that might seem boring as a means of testing my manhood. Weird, yes. I pick a hard, complex, subject that isn't picturesque, and that is visually difficult to sort out. It's quite a discipline. It forces me to focus, prioritize, and it makes everything around me both less distracting and more intensely present.

This morning, savoring the agreeable breeze and the unaccustomed comfort of a backrest, I sat for an hour, longer than I can usually tolerate, until the sun got too bright. Corn stalks with their leaves like limp swords are repetitive and confusing, as they overlap and display shifting hues, reflections and shadows, changing constantly with the slightest breeze. I had to work hard to relax, although it was very quiet. No cars passed the entire time. But then I noticed that rustling sound from the wind, sighing out of the deep layers of vaguely sinister stalks. Individual elements, how they were all the same and all different started to emerge. The wiggly curves, those long, limber, green strips caressing each other, moving back and forth, became almost an erotic dance. Soothing and meditative. It was oddly hypnotic. And it was just a cornfield.

Corn, Trout Run Road, 9" x 11 1/2", Derwent Inktense pencils

Comments

[Peter]

Great drawings ! Come to figure drawing at AI in York. Wed. 5:30.