Drawings, 1982 - Hengst Studio

These drawings are all from 1982. That was my 3rd year of undergraduate studies and about the time my identity as an artist was taking shape. I was 22 years old.

By this time I already knew I had an innate talent to draw realistically what I saw. I also knew I had a unique ability to draw the human figure. But more importantly, I had discovered an intense passion for making art and studying the work of other artists. In addition, I had a mentor named Dr. Woodal who held her doctorate in art history focusing on the moderns and was a true believer in the Western Cannon.

I was especially interested in how artists developed an idea for complex works of art from initial very “sketchy” drawings. You can see in the drawings below a young mind absorbing the lessons of how earlier artists developed ideas. It’s also clear to see how interested I was in telling stories with visual terms including the manipulation of style as a story telling tool. In some cases I was very much aware of what I was doing thanks to the coaching of Dr. Woodal. But in other aspects, I would not understand what I was doing until 20 or even 30 years later.

One reason these ideas took awhile to develop was that right after I graduated from Penn State in 1983 I moved to Taiwan for 4 years to study Eastern philosophy and Chinese art history. These Eastern ideas would also be deeply appealing to me. So I had the challenge of a huge appetite. The world all seemed so interesting and there was so much to absorb and process.

A couple of themes that jump out at me are the ones featuring an artist at work in his studio and of people purchasing something. This dual set of exchanges would fascinate me my whole life. The idea of gifts vs. purchases would be a central source of conflict for me until my early 40’s when thanks in part to the work of a writer named Lewis Hyde I was able to gracefully elide my work as an artist where the central key part… the art… would come to me as a gift and yet I would then sell my art for the best price I could get essentially converting the gift into profit, something that feels inherently wrong to every artist. This tension would drive a lot of my art including the works shown below.

You can also see a lot drawings of an artist or model looking at a sculpture. Among other things, these early drawings reveal how important sculpture would become to me much later in life.

There are also a lot of copies of “old master” drawings. I was very interested in how other artists used line, shape, negative space and the use of different kinds of drawing materials. I even became fascinated with the kind of paper or found materials that artists used to make their drawings.

Moreover, I remember discovering early on that all of my favorite artists at that time including Michelangelo, Rubens, Picasso and Rodin all considered drawing to be most important to their creative process.

“Collage Self Portrait”
Charcoal on several pieces of paper
40” x 30”
1982.

These are all images of myself. I was 21 or so when I made this piece so of course I was fascinated with myself. I was figuring out who I was. And trying to make sense of my childhood now that it was clearly behind me.
I was also interested in absorbing as many ideas about making art as I could.

Here you have everything from Francis Bacon to Picasso and all stuck together with a nod to Rauschenberg. I even included a xerox copy of a drawing which was not bran new technology at the time but was just beginning to become ubiquitous.

These 3 images of myself also refer to 3 distinctive works I had created that year or the year before and still remain among my favorite pieces. These are the works that had I become a famous and important artist, would have been heralded as my seminal works that portend the emergence of a significant artist. But alas, they serve an even more valuable role for me…they helped me sort out my demons, forge a coherent identity and helped me see for myself what I was capable of.

Yes…fame and fortune would have been nice, as well as the sense that my efforts were helpful to other artists the way Picasso and Bacon and Rauschenberg were for me and my development. But alas…it was not to be.
Nevertheless…..
An integrated psyche at 21?……not bad. I’ll take that.

“Studies of DaVinci”
Graphite on paper
18” x 24”
1982

These are both pencil drawings of faces in the paintings of Leonardo DaVinci. It was important to me to study how DaVinci constructed his figures and how was he able to convey so much depth of character. How did the quality of the lines used to define shape work with the impact of the lines used to create shadow? How did the unfinished part of the painting accentuate the finished parts? I remember being very curious about these questions and DaVinci seemed to be particularly adept at creating affects with these unusual techniques.

“Unfinished” aspects would become a hallmark of my work throughout my career.

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1982

This little drawing may have been inspired by any number of pieces by Edward Munch. I was very interested in his work at that time and on and off through my career. What is interesting to me now as a 60 year old man who owns a thriving spa for couples is how many sketches and paintings I did of couples over the years as well as how early this shows up in my oeuvre.

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1982