On Drawing: Food for Thought

"Drawing can be a potent problem-solving aid for both children and adults. A drawing can let you see how you feel. Putting that another way, the right brain, by means of a drawing, can show the left brain what the trouble is. The left brain, in turn, can use its own powerful skills--language and logical thought--to solve the problem."  -- Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

December 2, 2016

"The scribbling of any....child clearly indicate how thoroughly immersed he is in the sensation of moving his hand and crayon aimlessly over a surface, depositing a line in his path. There must be some quantity of magic in this alone." 

-- Edward Hill, The Language of Drawing

December 3, 2016

"The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence...We make our discoveries while in the state because then we are clear-sighted." 

-- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

December 4, 2016

"To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large--this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone." 

-- Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

On Drawing....The Search

November 28, 2016

The ongoing conversation about drawing continues in this post...there's much to talk about, it seems to me! Do feel free to chime in anytime, as I'm happy to have a dialogue and hear about your experiences with drawing. For the past couple of posts, I've been talking about my daily drawing practice, as a form of mediation and as a way to let go and watch what unfolds. 

It helps to approach the process from the inside out, rather than the outside in. That may not make much sense at first glance. Drawing in this way uses your brain, but the "thinking" comes through the senses, through the body, rather than just a cognitive approach. As a kind of meditation, you are open to the conversation and to what is happening within as well as without. 

I'll share some specifics with the drawings from the last couple of days to illustrate what I am talking about. Yesterday morning, I sat down with my little 6x4" sheet of Japanese paper and my trusty mechanical pencil. After dating the page, I began with a dot toward the top and without picking up the pencil, had the sense to let the the line wander from there, in a kind of aimless search...for something....for the drawing itself, I think. The meandering lines continued, making one shape then moving to another when the moment felt right. I understood through the mark-making that this meandering line was about "the search"....both in a literal sense and as a metaphor. 

I respond to drawings, to paintings and all manner of works that allow the sense of the search to come through. Some artworks appear to have emerged into being fully formed, but I need to see the quest, the false starts (there are none, really), the evidence of the search in the process of making. As a maker, it is through the search that I find the meaning, just as that little moment was revealed in the making of those meandering lines yesterday. After the initial pencil lines, I picked up my white ink pen and overlaid more searching, meandering lines.

The notion of "the search" reminded me that the process of drawing from life, from observation, is also fundamentally about the search. On another larger sheet of paper I began to draw the not-so-well-tended-geranium in a pot on my desk. If you want to draw from life, it begins with seeing....with looking, with the search. I allowed a searching line to flow from the pencil (and later that white pen again) as I let my eyes wander up and down the stem, following the edges of leaves, as they overlapped and intersected. My hand became an extension of my eyes...Drawing from life is fundamentally an act of eye-hand coordination. As many of my readers know, I'm not all that keen on drawing from life, as my work takes a much more indirect route. And yet, it's all a search....for being in the moment, for meaning, for discovering and describing what we see or what we know to be true.

November 29, 2016

Today's drawing began much as the one yesterday, but the dots came first, for the most part, and then a meandering line was back, wanting to connect these dots in most indirect ways....circling, looping, wandering in ways that made loose connections between these random dots. And there it was again...the moment of understanding through the work. We all attempt to construct meaning in our lives and this process of making connections between points, between events, is how we do it. Sometimes the connection between dots is a pretty direct, straight line...a kind of cause and effect, but so many times, it seems that the line between this point and that is meandering, looping, intersecting and overlapping with other lines. It's the never ending search.

Maybe this gives you a bit more understanding (maybe not!) as to how the process of drawing tells me what the drawing itself is about. It is a process of "inside out" where the meaning emerges through an evolving understanding as my pencil moves across the page, rather than one where I know what I want to say and set about saying it. The insights come through the searching marks.

I make many of these drawings available in my Etsy shop with the hope that they bring some moments of contemplation as well as joy and delight to others. I'd love to hear from you with your thoughts and experiences about the power of drawing.

On Drawing...Or, Drawing on Drawing

January 25, 2013

I've been thinking a lot about drawing lately, as it is central to my artistic practice. No matter what materials I am working with, I think of everything that I do as drawing. I also feel that, as a general rule, the definitions out there of what constitutes "drawing" are too limited. It is such an absolutely fundamental process, like breathing, that it becomes an integral part of the process of making, whether you are a painter, sculptor, mixed media artist....or almost anything else. I'm certainly not a singer, but anyone who is a singer knows that breathing is a central to being able to sing well. Understanding the breath is fundamental for singing, dancing....so many things, and a connection to drawing (broadly defined!) is central to the process of creation.

I feel very strongly that each person possesses a core of creativity, though in our culture, almost everyone I talk to who is not an artist, doesn't believe they have it within them, which fills me with a kind of sadness. I believe creativity is part of our humanity and despite what our years of schooling have done to us, it's still there. It is this passion about creativity that has gotten me thinking about drawing.

January 24, 2013

In all my decades of being an artist, it has never occurred to me that I was a teacher or that I was interested in teaching, but these ideas I have about creativity have, for the first time, gotten me thinking about doing workshops. Each of us has an inner language, a way of mark-making, that is unique, like a fingerprint. Drawing, it seems to me, is fundamental to connecting to that inner core of creativity and being able to "draw" from within.

Below is the Merriam-Webster definition of drawing:

Simple Definition of drawing

• : a picture, image, etc., that is made by making lines on a surface with a pencil, pen, marker, chalk, etc., but usually not with paint
• : the act or art of making a picture, image, etc., with a pencil, pen, marker, chalk, etc., but usually not with paint

: an act of choosing something (such as a winning ticket) from a group without knowing which one you are choosing
That seems pretty limited to me. "Not with paint"... I'm not buying that. I haven't yet come up with a satisfying definition of my own, but the one above doesn't capture it at all. The process of making with the hand is essential.....there is a flow from the senses, through the brain, back through the hand that is part of drawing. The body is part of drawing. Going back to my metaphor of the breath....we understand that breathing is a process that involves quite a bit more than the nose or the mouth. So, while I cogitate further on a suitable definition of drawing, I'll spend the next few posts sharing a few images from some of my favorite artists, whose works seem to me to be based in drawing.
The pieces below are paintings by Rick Johns, a painter from here in Vermillion, South Dakota. Rick is a fine painter, but also a fine craftsman builder....of houses, kayaks, you name it. These paintings have a wonderfully layered surface and a sensitivity to mark making that leaves a trace of the search. I love them....yes, they are paintings, but these are also drawings, according to my still nebulous definition.

No. 21

No. 43

So, I will continue to cogitate about this teaching idea and how I can create a workshop that will connect people to their inner language, allowing them to discover the richness within. It's important, because the process of making is fundamental to our humanity. 
Here in South Dakota, we've just had our first snow of the season....yikes, we were all caught off guard, having enjoyed more than our share of a perfectly lovely autumn. And now, here's to a perfectly lovely winter! Enjoy your weekend.

The Repetitive Mark

We were paid a memorable visit by winter storm, Kayla, this week. She was quite something! Johntimothy and I were nestled safely inside for a beautiful day of snow and more snow. I'm quite sure we got at least a foot of it, wouldn't you say? I heard that in Vermillion, just 8 miles away, it was 17 inches. We had an amazing sculptural overhang, as seen below, along the length of the roofline in the back....alas, we had to knock it down. So, we eventually got ourselves dug out and life has returned to normal. 

Shoveling after the blizzard delayed my getting into the studio by a bit, but I got back in the rhythm of making marks on yet another series of new pieces. There is something so meditative about making repetitive marks....I just love it! I'm sure my focus on tiny marks would drive many others quite mad, but for me, it puts me right in the zone. What's been interesting in making these drawings is that, while I often use hand stitching as an extension of drawing, these are basically drawings that come to resemble stitches. And it's funny how the finished pieces almost look like bits of cloth. Here are a few details of this new series. I'm not sure I'll have time to properly photograph all the work before the show, which is installed next Monday, but will certainly do it after the pieces come back.

Hope you are having a good week....the weekend is nearly here! Enjoy!

Finding Flow

Oh, so wonderful to be back in the studio. It also doesn't hurt to have a focus of getting new work made for an upcoming exhibition! In a month, I'll begin installing the show at Briar Cliff University in Sioux City, so between now and then I will make a whole lot of new pieces. The nature of the work, as well as the way I plan to hang it, will end up being more of an installation....which is somewhat of a stretch for me.

What's so wonderful is experiencing "the flow". This concept of the "flow" has very important implications for living a full and meaningful life, at home, at work and at play. If you are not familiar with the idea, there is a full explanation here. For me, what is significant, is that only when I am fully immersed in the studio, do I really experience flow. It is then that the "shoulds" stop....for instance, often when I am reading, I think I should be doing the laundry, or when I'm online I think I should be doing this or that other important thing. But, when I am in the studio, in the flow, there is no place else I should be. That is significant, I think. We can learn a great deal about ourselves by observing when we experience the timelessness of flow. It holds the key to our motivation, our creativity and what engages us to be fully ourselves.

In between the new pieces now finished for the show, I finally finished a piece for my Etsy shop that has been in the works for some time.

Recollections, no.1

I'm excited about the other new pieces that are being made....here's a sneak peak. At this point, they are all untitled, but that will no doubt change. These piece are all 8x8" and will be hung in a grid pattern....3 sets of 9. So....4 down, 23 to go!

Hope the new year has started off well for you. Enjoy your weekend! I'll be in the studio, but at this point, there's no place I'd rather be!

The Touchstone Voice

The tug-of-war has gotten underway....well, maybe that's casting a rather negative gloom over the creative process. But, there are moments when it feels like a tug-of-war! Do you often feel there are countless voices at work inside you, each with their own take on giving you just the right advice?

You can't listen to everyone of course, and for me the secret is tuning out the others and just listening to the unnamed voice that I learned to trust probably 15 years ago. I'd been making art before that for decades, but somehow I began to trust myself and the work that is truly my own began to come forth. It was only then that I knew that I'd slipped into my own skin as an artist. Maybe I'll call it my touchstone voice.

It's a quiet voice, one that encourages letting go and trusting. And there's the big struggle....giving over control and allowing the process to unfold in its own time. Patience is required.

Of course, my ego wants to control the work, wants to bring to life the vision in my head. That's the first step in letting go and eventually it happens with me, because I'm forced to admit defeat by hitting the wall. When the work goes badly session after session, I know, if I'm listening to the touchstone voice, it's because I haven't let go. Here's how the touchstone would speak to me, if it happened in straightforward English, which it doesn't, because I think the touchstone speaks in a kind of pre-language.

"Forget that idea in your head, it's coming from the wrong place....you'll see the essence of that idea come to be, but it's not going to happen the way you are going about it. You are waiting and pacing by the front door for something to happen, but the work is going to come to you through the back door, wearing clothing you won't at first recognize. It will come like an apparition, in layers, building slowly. It may take some time to materialize, but you'll recognize it when it does."

And it's true. At least for me, the best work I've made happens that way. You've never seen the other stuff, because it never gets finished. Those pieces get tossed out or those first "cognitive thinking" attempts get painted over and I let the work emerge as it wants to. I quit watching the front door and sit quietly, waiting for the creaky sound of the back door opening.

So the photos here are a work in progress...the back door is unlatched and open. Lots of layers of gouache, lots of letting go, building I know not what exactly. I don't know where this is going....the "me" with the old worn out brush in my hand....I'm the last to know. Sometimes that conversation and the struggle happens in another room out of my hearing and I can actually enjoy the process. Like here....I'm enjoying watching this piece unfold. This is gouache on a luscious, sturdy handmade paper. Eventually, I'd like to have some sewing on it as well....and just whose voice is that?

I must leave this piece for a time as my husband and I travel to visit family for the holidays. Wishing you peace and joy this season. I'll keep in touch on my travels. Cheers!

Inner Language: The Individual Mark

Hello again! I've been meaning to do a post about something that I hope will touch a chord...a glimmer of recognition, and that is...the power of the individual mark. That's a rather ambiguous term, I realize, but it's a way of talking about how each one of us, whether or not we consider ourselves artists, has a way of making marks that is unique. And that is a very powerful thing, it seems to me. I have spent years drawing, making my marks, and I've come to understand how impossible it is to deny that we have a personality that expresses itself in the marks we make.

I believe it still holds true that our fingerprints belong to us alone and I think we all agree that each person has a unique handwriting. So, if we are free from fear, from the inner critic, along with all the "shoulds" and "musts" that follow us through our day....and if we let go of thinking to let our hand wander, I believe that our inner language flows through the ink tracing its path across the page. 

I spend a few moments in this activity every day, in a kind of ritual that I call the daily drawing. I don't try, I don't think, I let my hand go and watch the dance unfold. Day after day I watch this process, as if looking over my own shoulder, and the same thoughts occur. The marks I make are absolutely consistent....across time, across media...my body expresses itself in an effortless dance

in this daily ritual.

Below are a couple of pieces I started a month or so ago...just as drawing on handmade paper with a layer of acrylic. These drawings will be heavily layered with alternating and intertwining paint and drawing that both reveals and conceals. It seems quite obvious that I can't quite get away from myself, as the marks on these upper drawings absolutely resonate with what comes through my hands in the daily drawings seen below. I've just posted a couple from the last few days, along with one that reveals bits and piece from the November pile....now ready for their long-awaited dip in the beeswax!

All this is not to tout these drawings in any way, but to express the notion that each one of us has the capacity to express ourselves in unique ways. Rather than follow all the latest trends out there that have you following the lead of others, why not experiment with a simple practice that allows you to find your own voice and your own mark. 

Try this. Take seven small sheets of paper and a favorite pen (or other mark-making tool). Find a quiet space and a quiet time each day...even 5 minutes is enough. Close the door and leave that inner critic outside. Without thinking, let your hand move the pen around the page, stopping when something inside says stop now. Tomorrow do the same thing...and again for the rest of the week. I have a sense that what you will find is that, if you have really let go and not tried to make a "Drawing", then you will begin to see yourself in a new way. You will find that the way you put pen to page will be gaining consistency and that you can discover and recognize yourself in the marks you make. These drawing don't have to be "good" in the eyes of anyone else....there is nothing better than you being you. It's a dance and you are free....don't think, just be in the moment. I think the discovery of your own creative self is a very powerful thing.

I'd love to hear from you if you want to share what you've found! Hope the rest of your week is full of hope and moments of inspiration! 

Notes From The Ancestors

I seem to have lost my regular posting days of Monday and Friday. I'm sure you're not watching the calendar or your clocks to see if I post to my blog "on time" or not...maybe this is a good sign that I'm going a little easier on myself!  The weather is ever so slowly inching toward the lovely stage, but it's quite a tedious process that includes a fair amount of cold, wind and rain.  Still in the 50s this morning, but should be warmer this afternoon and I can't wait to get back outside and continue the weed pulling and communing with the fresh growth in the garden.  I've been here nearly six years now, but having come from decades spent in Florida, it still astonishes me each spring to see plants coming back from "the dead"...that's what it feels like!

So, I have begun working again on the full size sheets of my husband's delicious handmade paper, as I mentioned at the beginning of the week.  Here's that piece I showed in an incomplete state earlier...now listed in my shop here.

Notes From The Ancestors

Lots of layers of drawing underneath the photos and the organza "envelope" that holds snippets of text and image from vintage family photographs.  I have a few more pieces in the works...a fragment below of one on a background of beautiful soft pink....a color I discovered comes easily when adding white to burnt sienna!

Actually, this photo doesn't capture the color quite right...it almost looks lavender here...I'll make sure to have it properly photographed for you when it's finished....this is just a small teaser!

I've stitched a few more rows of blue on the river piece and have spent my own time doing a little "repair"work on Violett (my new sewing machine for those of you who are recent readers of this blog)...the thread kept getting caught from below in the bobbin and I spent many a frustrating attempt trying to sew, with the same bunched up chunk of thread each time.  I'm happy to say that I was able to clean out the little bobbin case nicely with the brush, provide a few drops of much needed oil exactly where the booklet said to place it and sure enough, I practically heard Violett breathe a sigh of relief before she headed off sewing that line of blue like a dream!  Such a victory for me who is so very unmechanically inclined!!

Well, hope you are having a great weekend.  I will continue to mull over the large and small questions...what defines success, how can I keep myself moving forward, how to make sales without sacrificing my artistic integrity, how to find balance in life, etc. etc.  Oh, and still working on building my new website!  Keep your hands moving, that's my mantra!

See you at the first of the week!

Practice Random Acts of Drawing

What a saga this weekend was in the studio!  Who said that evolution was a slow process....I zipped from creation to ultimate destruction in almost no time at all!  Whatever I told you on Friday I was all excited about...well I have nothing to show for it, except a big hole in a piece of paper where I cut out the main element....my last attempt to salvage a lost experiment, which turned out to be its ultimate death. Although I can't be sure, because for the life of me, I can't even find that part I cut out, which is why all I can show you as proof of this whole endeavor is this:

At the point where I cut this out, I had already begun the destruction of the piece, because I'd determined the scale was all wrong, so I trimmed it at the top and bottom.  Even though I already knew it to be true that I'd trimmed it too close to the bottom of the "mysterious object", I showed it to John, whose first and only comment was, "it's trimmed too close to the bottom"....I knew that, but I was hoping it wasn't THAT obvious.  So then I thought, aha, rather than attaching some fancy fringe to the bottom (just joking!), I'll just cut this strange form that most closely resembles a chrysalis, and release it from this page altogether, which isn't working in the least and I'll give it a new life some other way. I did that and I swear that thing must have hatched and flown away, because I can't find it anywhere! Who knows and who cares where it is now...I've glad to be done with the thing. However, I must tell you that I'd spent a lot of time, sewing a gazillion soft lavender beads on that little form, along with the countless stitches and the pattern of punched holes.  Enough said....about that anyway.  Easy come, easy go, as they say.

So, the thing that I was most enamored with in that disappeared form is that it started out just as a plain sheet of Japanese paper dipped in beeswax. I had another nice little square of that in front of me on the desk....what would happen if I just crinkled that up, which I did immediately and to my delight found myself confronted with the most beautiful marks and I saw them right away as random acts of drawing.  I felt at home....I was back inside myself, speaking my own language....and I saw that with my failed experiment, I'd been trying make something sleek and elegant, but it never had that quality....but here right in front of me, were elegant marks made just by crumpling a piece of beeswaxed paper....so random, so beautiful....here's most of that sheet still intact below.  I envisioned using bits of the page here and there for collage and once again, my hands were quicker than my head...I began tearing it apart.

In the end, I went back to making the work I'd been making...a few Spring Meditation drawings and another Botanical (or is it some animal form?) Specimen.  Don't we always just come full circle!

Spring Meditation no.5

Spring Meditation no.6

Spring Meditation no.7

Botanical Specimen no.4

text reads: this or that or the other thing

I was inspired by the notion of practicing random acts of drawing to make a treasury with that in mind.

Here's a link to the treasury that is full of inspiring works...at least to me!!!

Random Acts of Drawing

See you tomorrow...I encourage you to practice some random acts of drawing...or look for them...they are everywhere around you!

The Hand Drawn Line

Pearls on a String no.4 was posted in my etsy shop a few days ago and continues my exploration of line...there is something so direct and beautiful about that movement of your hand across the page that creates a line, however halting or clumsy.  The allusion to writing, to the history of our collective lives...we are all pearls on a string.  

A pattern is emerging for me and Thursday seems to be create a Treasury on Etsy day!  It's just so fun to explore all the great work, even though, with only 16 slots, it's often very difficult to choose.  I always find new shops, new artists and artisans to learn more about and today was no different!  No surprise I'm sure, about the title for today's treasury The Hand Drawn Line.  Have a look at all the work and those oh, so beautiful hand drawn lines.  In case anyone has a question about what makes a hand drawn line...for me it can be in any medium---sewn, scratched into clay, made with marker, paint, anything....you know a hand-drawn line when you see one--it bears the mark of the maker.

Swing of the Pendulum

Here is a little meditation drawing in the form of a book page--Freefloating Whimsy no.1.  Working intuitively, I just follow my instincts as the drawing builds, scumbling acrylic paint, then drawing, perhaps more paint here, a few stray marks there...and some flowers...are those pearls?...letting my thoughts flow through my hands.  Added embroidery where the gutter would be on a book page, I think of these drawings as intimate and personal as the experience of being transported in the pages of a book...and yet....

after a few freefloating whimsy works, it's structure my intuition demands and I find myself drawn to the grid...seeking order, pattern and simplicity.  This is all a process and when I detach myself, so interesting to observe.  I can't keep up with myself...all these changing desires.  Thank goodness, there is room in the universe for everything...if only there were time!

Happy to hear comments and thoughts about your creative process!

Meditation Drawings

When I was in my late twenties, I decided to go back to school to get a teaching certification in art.  At The University of South Florida, I had a number of wonderful professors, but one of them, Richard Loveless, taught me some particularly valuable lessons, many of which had to do with being an artist.  One of the exercises we did individually involved taking a stack of 50 sheets of blank paper, along with a favorite mark-making tool, and sitting in a quiet place, without interruption, begin making marks on those pages.  The rule was not to think about it...make marks, without judgement, without thinking, without planning and without editing.  Page after page, we weren't to make finished "drawings", but making marks that came from the inside out, turning the page and beginning the next when the moment felt right.  On a certain day, we all came together as a class and laid out our 50 drawings at the same time on the floor, filling the room entirely.  What was immediately clear, and this was obviously the point of the exercise, was that each person in that room had a very individual inner landscape of mark-making...a way of "drawing" that was unique to them.  It was a very powerful moment for me...to see my own marks, pure, having come from the place where my intuition resides.

So, even now, when I find that I'm overthinking my work or  I have a sense I'm trying to make art from a place that isn't my own in order to please an audience, I come back to making what I call meditation drawings.  I still have that original stack of 50 pages, which I cherish, but the drawing above is from another time, a decade or more later, when I came back to make those very intuitive meditation drawings.

And here I am again, yet another decade or so later, making mediation drawings, now more minimal, along with bits of text pieces collaged on during various stages of the layering of paint and drawing...but there it is, the recognition of my own voice...my own voice loud and clear.  As an artist, there is maybe nothing more important than discovering and rediscovering your voice.

By the way, I never did get that teaching certification...I found that really what I needed was to be back in school...and perhaps it was just in order to have that experience of finding my own voice.  It's an exercise I recommend to anyone that is willing to let go in order to find their own set of marks.

Sewn Paper

Just finished up Season Cycles/Spring no. 13 and no. 14 and added to MissouriBendStudio on etsy.com.  In my last post I showed this piece (Spring no. 14) before any of the embroidery and beads were added.  Here it is in its finished state, many hours later!  It's fun to watch what happens as each stitch is added...a very slow and meditative way of drawing!

Day by Day

What a difference in the color of the landscape day by day.  The unfolding of green seems to be accelerating at a pace I can't quite remember from years before.  A nice rain last night and this morning has given the plants a nice long drink!  Posted a couple of pieces in my etsy.com shop today and am busy working on a several others, which I hope I can post over the weekend.  We'll see...one can't quite control the creative process.

Season Cycles/Early Spring no.11 is pictured above.  Visit my shop for others in the Season Cycles series, all with detail views.