May 25, 2020

soft pastel on Rives BFK paper, 30" x 22"

May 24, 2020

Larger format, more sustained effort.

soft pastels on Rives BFK paper, 30" x 22"

May 18-20, 2020

I don't ever know what I'm going to produce when I have a fresh sheet of paper in front of me. If I try to plan very much, I get overwhelmed, or I lose interest. I just start and let my engagement with a subject or a scene take me on an emotional outing, evocative of mood. Sometimes I'm calm and focused and do careful studies, sometimes I'm distracted and impatient, sometimes I'm riled and just slash away. I don't want to make pretty pictures, but I do get swept up in the beauty of whatever has my attention. Or I might just want to vent. Or prove something to myself. Or not. There's no consistency to it and I can't predict where I'll find myself. It's never the same trip. It seems to matter a lot to me to share what I'm seeing and how it makes me feel. To convey an experience. But more than that I just feel compelled to do this, to draw and paint. It takes me outside of myself. It's very different from the design I do for a living, which I also feel a need to do. But it's not really separate - I don't view myself as having a vocation and an avocation. I think about it all the time. I've wasted plenty of time and energy pondering and not doing. So I'm trying to think less and just do more. I'd like to make time to do larger scale work, more sustained and developed at greater depth. But in the meantime, maybe it's enough to fit what I can do into each day.

wednesday morning, may 20, 2020Tuesday evening, May 19, 2020Monday evening, May 18, 2020Monday afternoon, May 18, 2020

Five more studies: May 16-17, 2020

Doing a sketch now and then is different from making a sustained effort. The excuse of having other responsibilities to fulfill is true but not at the core of avoidance. Fear of disappointment is hard for me to drive away, and recognizing that I'm afraid of failure or mediocrity triggers anger, and under that, shame. I ask myself if I'm just another hungry ego. I hope I'm motivated by something better than that.

Easy to get tangled up in these inner conflicts and just end up wasting irreplaceable hours, days, years. So I went out again after dinner yesterday. Then on my bicycle early this morning, sketchbook and pencils tucked into my backpack. In the grass beside mostly quiet roads. The occasional passers by, on bicycles or in pickup trucks, slow down and ask me if I need help. I definitely need help, but of course I don't say that. Later sitting on the patio back home before lunch as sprinkles of rain begin to fall.

Trying to understand what I want to do, trying to find my way back. Maybe by doing more of it, clarity will emerge.

early evening, Kinderhook Roadelusive moments before dusksunday morning, Bridge Valley Roadroadside dandelionslooking up from the patio

Farmland studies May 13-16, 2020

I'm seeing something in these farmland vistas along a ridge running east to west, just a few miles from home. I can't quite say why - something about clusters of barns, silos, outbuildings, houses, big trees engulfed by stretches of cultivated fields and woodlots. This undulating landscape that seems oceanlike and the buildings like seagoing vessels criss-crossing the waves. Ribbons overlapping and disappearing over a moving line of horizon. I'm doing these pencil and watercolor studies to try to get to something; I'm not quite sure what.