Lately I have noticed more and more that art I like or that draws me to it somehow, has very little to do with the subject matter. It could be the most mundane boring thing, the edge of a table or a roof line on a building or shadow on a wall. My attraction to a piece seems to be more about the lines or strokes or something else I can’t put my finger on.
I when I am thinking of a composition or new project I find myself thinking about what this is a picture of… I am thinking about making a “picture”.
I have understood for some time that it is more than that but it takes time for these things to sink in. I am not sure what I will do with that realization but I certainly need to continue to try and find that path.
I recently started reading a book: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. I am early into it and it is one of those books you don’t just sit and read through. You read a section and then give it some time to sink in. So it becomes the bedtime reading… an idea to close my eyes to. Last might I read this and it struck me, (again), because it applies a bit to what I have been thinking about. We are not trying to draw something or paint something, we are trying to see.
Maybe that’s what keeps us coming back: not to capture what we are seeing, but to wake up to it.
I have been playing more with the picture idea below. I have other thoughts and lots of sketches of different variations and iterations but somewhere in the last few weeks I finished this drawing using charcoal and a sepia Carbothello pencil. When it was done I decided to take a blueish wash in watercolor and gradate down from the top with it. It is about 10” X 15” on Canson Bristol Velum paper. I enjoyed the paper, nice and smooth, took the charcoal well. Still, probably more picture making than idea seeing but I will keep trying.
Here is another charcoal drawing I finished a while back and thought it was done at the time. Then, for some reason, I felt like adding color. I don’t know if it means anything, but it changed the piece for me. The title, Inflection, still feels right. Again, falling short on the goal of going beyond "picture making”, but I have to take what I can get and call it a small win.
I just finished a book that I can’t quite recommend. I made it all the way through, mostly out of stubbornness but some curiosity. It’s called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki. I kept expecting some real insight into the “beginner’s mind” part, but that never really showed up. There were a few good ideas, but overall, not something I’d tell anyone to rush out and read.
It did, however, remind me of another book I picked up maybe twenty years ago: Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. I think that one actually changed my life.
I’ve been a meditation dabbler since the old Kung Fu days back in the 70s, when I first started getting curious about that stuff. Mindfulness in Plain English was the first book that made meditation feel practical. Not the transcendental stuff but something you could actually do, not just think about. Over the years, I think it’s shaped how I move through life more than I realized at the time.
So, those are my book reviews for the month, one I finished and don’t necessarily recommend, and one that’s still working on me twenty years later.
A podcast I have occasionally enjoyed over the last few years is Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. He had his final episode in October and it was an eloquent and thoughtful discussion about leadership and mentoring and being able to listen to viewpoints that don’t necessarily align with our own, learning to disagree without loosing sight of the bigger picture. As well as a touch of optimism.
Things I think a lot about at this stage in my life and this time in our world. Thinking about our place in this whole thing and the small part each of us plays. Maybe our importance lies in simply having some effect on the tiny circle we come in contact with during our short time here. Our daily struggles to learn, to create, to grow, and, in some small way, to leave a mark…
And if you have read this far, I will leave you with this musical thought, an old Cannonball Adderley piece that always makes me smile:
Follow me and subscribe on Substack
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.” — Seneca