Drawings, 1987-1988

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“Self Portrait”
Pencil/paper
18” x 12”
1988

I was a Manhattanite when I made this. I was 26 or so. Fresh from living in Taipei and probably still in culture shock. Living in the Big Apple was a dream come true. Here I am in my long black wool coat. Smart glasses and stylish Barrett. There is a halo of energy shooting out of my head and my gaze has the focus and determination of intelligence and youth.

But I don’t have any arms. Instead I appear more like a stele, a solid slab set down in my new world to declare myself emphatically here. I remember having intense decision making anxiety about whether to stay in New York or return to Taipei. After all, I had never been an adult in America and I went from making enough money to support my modest bohemian lifestyle teaching English one day a week in Taiwan to living like a rat barely able to cover my costs working my ass off for $6/hour.

Many stele’s in Ancient Greece also doubled as celebrations of male fertility as can be seen in an example I include here. And although I did not include a penis in my drawing, one could argue my entire self is one big expression of erect male potential, complete with an ejaculation of energy. The whole thing exudes potential even without arms and a cock. This is the power of simply being and possibly of singular ramming.

Perhaps I did this drawing to help me stake my psychic terrain. It’s as if I was saying, “ I am here, god damn it, and I’m going to stay and become a modern artist. Even if I have to ram my way forward.” And I did.

 

Self Portrait, 1988
A stele from ancient Greece
Spiritual Geometry

“Spiritual Geometry”
Graphite/paper
11” x 8.5”
1987

It’s hard to overstate how serious I was working to create a way that combined geometric hard lines and figure drawing. I was read lots of books about sacred geometry from Plato to Rudolf Steiner. I also studied the Yantra art and philosophy of Ancient India. It I just couldn’t do it. The work ended up looking like this, stiff and devoid of soul. And frankly to much like a concept piece than an actual work of art. If there was ever a moment when I was guilty of over thinking it, this was it.

And yet, I still think there is something to this and will probably try again.

“Self Portrait”
Paint/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987

1987 was a weird year for me personally and artistically. I started the year in Manhattan and by the summer I was living on a cove across Puget Sound from Seattle on the opposite side of the continent. And along with me was Lisa, the woman I fell in love with in New York. We both wanted to leave Manhattan. She grew up there but wanted to see something else. And I wanted to get back to Taiwan. Seattle was at least in the right direction.

Back then, Seattle was not the city it became over the next 30 years. And I must say, it has been fun to be part of that transition. While my original intent was to move back to Taiwan, I never left primarily because Seattle kept giving me time and space to develop my art. It also gave me a loving and supportive audience for my work on so many levels. The only thing it didn’t provide and which I never achieved so far was any higher level recognition for my work nor remuneration on a level any where near the level of my work.  

But I was still in my mid-late 20’s when I arrived here and fresh from living in Taiwan and then Manhattan for several years. I was so ready to sit down in a place I could afford and just make art… lots of art. The duplex on the mud flat in Indianola cove gave me exactly what I needed. 

1997 was a little sparse as I spent most of the year relocating and resolving my relationship with Lisa. We loved each other but she discovered she just wasn’t ready to leave the city and I was most certainly not going back. I remember how painful that breakup was but how necessary it was too.  

These 2 drawing/paintings convey our youth. And they convey how much I saw us as almost twins. We look like young flowers dipped in dread, thin and cheerful yet black and red and seemingly on the leading edge of a forest fire.   

Paint/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987

“Rothko”
Paint/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987

This isn’t exactly a copy of a Mark Rothko but it might as well be.  In 1986 and 1987 I was studying this artist very deeply. I wanted to absorb everything I could from this late abstract expressionist who was at the peek of his career and notoriety in the 1950’s. The quiet combination of order and oceanic spirituality was a clue for my own efforts to contain and express all the Western and Eastern art I had been absorbing and which I saw happening in American culture. I did countless little “rothkoesque” paintings around this time.    And even though this is arguably a painting, not a drawing, I include it in this section because like a lot of drawings it is a small work in which I was working out the most fundamental aspects of my artistic efforts. It is not so much a preparatory work for a larger work as it is an effort to figure out how I wanted to make a painting in the first place before making bigger paintings.

Paint/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987

Paint/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1987