finally, stilted and cringing, i drew yesterday. stiff fingers, and bizarre painful yearning, i wanted to. i wanted to record the poorly put artwork on the wall of the coffee shop, and the cheesy guy that wishes he could be a mac ad. it was too beautiful not to.
its been hard watching these students draw, and know what training and skill is inside of me, but i wonder now if a sketchbook was always an entire novel of images that could become the worst weight i've ever experienced: failure. i never drew for me, i drew for other people, i drew to remember things, i drew cause i had to achieve a grade, or study a form for later painstaking illustration, but never for me. just because i saw something witty, and wonderfully human, something that struck me with its wry sense of tragic comedy, to capture a moment, a whisper of mortality.
these art students have it wrong. the ones i'm modeling for are so concerned with the contour, the outermost edge, the vague outline of what makes a pose what it is, not the form, the sense of weight, not the power of a thoughtful, contemplated gesture.
its about looking for that particle, that line, the subtle crease that makes the whole drawing, the scene, the charcoal or pen on paper... finding the moment in a gesture, the shape of being human.
so its coming back. the discourse finding its way to my fingers, the truths i know about illustrating life awakening in my hands that have been numb for some time now. since i have no one to seek favor from, no grades to fight for, i can let go of my intense fear of failure, of not having the best, most skillful drawing to show, and think and observe through my hands, rather than my terrified heart.
1 comment:
art for art's sake...that is the ?
from what i have observed, no juices ever flowed so strongly as those steeped in purpose, those used to express the things and issues that are most important to the individual doing the expressing.
no dim bulb, ill informed, right wing, homophobic, xenophobic, howdy doody trip back to the 50's, nutjob ever felt so alive as when he/she was jingoistically wrapping themself in the flag, screaming at a town hall meeting, denouncing "choice" or liberals or health insurance reform as socialism, while clinging to their fictitious deity and their guns.
no knee-jerk liberal ever felt so impassioned or relevant as when they were "saving the planet" or outspokenly denouncing the war du-jour, the WTO, the corporatacracy, the military industrial complex, the dehumanizing soulless of capitalism and of course, hummers.
Picasso spoke to the "few" who can appreciate... Monet has become a euphemism for "he/she looks good at a distance, but up close...yech"
yet, whether one believes it was accidental or not, Shepard Fairey spoke to a whole generation...
without shouting once.
after the years of practice, the training and the passing and/or failing, the concern for grades, we experience the "pause", the reflection...the inertia of, what now....for whom and for what am i?.. is this??..
a talent or gift, however we choose to identify it, is never more useful to and "understood" by (and less a burden for) its wielder, than when it's wielder is full of purpose, when it is used for social influence.
maybe if Vincent had a focus or purpose or cause outside his self involvement, who knows...perhaps his ear and his life would have been saved.
it is WE who decide, ultimately, what our "purpose" is.
life is a run-on sentence.
but what do i know.... i shudder to imagine Picasso's version of the "Hope" poster.
i liked your...Obama.
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