“Sketchbook 8/23”
Paper
8” x 5”
2023
I always date the sketches in my sketchbooks by the month and the year. And I never date my paintings. The reasons are clear to me. The sketchbooks are for me. They are a kind of running diary of the images that pour through my brain. Frankly, the things I see in my mind’s eye look nothing like these humble sketches. But the forces that shape the vivid multi colored and multi layered images flowing through my brain also shape these sketches with their inherent limitations of pencil and paper.
The dates help me make sense of them when I look at them years later.
I don’t date the paintings because they are meant to be seen by others. And the less information on the surface, which is often delicately balanced, the better.
Most of the sketches in this book deal with my interest in a worldwide phenomena with what I will call “cutism.” This is a fascination with cartoon like cute things, most especially cute little animals or quasi animal- human creatures. It is a peculiar fascination especially in light of our culture’s simultaneous obsession with pornography and what I would also call gym culture that propels images of almost cartoonish like physical hyper realistic excess including silicone breasts and steroid jacked muscles.
Some of these sketches explore the idea of combining these ideas in both 2 and 3 dimensional works of art.
The other theme that gets explored is the image of the street beggar. You will see a few of these “ideas” appearing and developing here.
Finally, the other aspect of these sketches that might be worth pointing out is that some of them are clearly sketches where I am searching for an idea or from. You will see something repeated directly over top of something else with small modifications. In a few other cases you will see a remarkably worked out concept and composition. These are mini masterpieces to me.
A masterpiece originally meant a piece that established an artist as a “master”. This had very real economic and practical meanings. It meant it qualified him to receive commissions from nobility and church. It meant he could take on apprentices who paid to work in the service of the master which is undeniably better than free labor. And in a time when paint had to be made in each artists studio, not purchased at the store down the street, that had very meaningful benefits.
Here, I use the word “masterpiece” to indicate a kind of easy and unpretentious perfection. These are pieces that just seem to emerge from nowhere already perfectly designed and drawn. And then there are lots of others that barely rise above the standard of a scribble. I include them all here so that you can get a closer look at the creative process and how it is an uneven journey that sometimes has moments of beauty and magic and at other times seems aimless and worthless.
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This sketch book is larger than most and has fewer pages. Like almost all of my sketch books, it was filled with drawings I do in public spaces. I often sit in cafes or parks where I can watch people and reflect on my impressions and experiences. These drawings are like a diary of thoughts and impressions of what I see and what I am experiencing. Usually I draw on a vocabulary for expressing these things and at the same time I am often adding to that repertoire.
In this set of drawings I use some familiar tropes of fat elder men ogling or being involved with a voluptuous female who is sometimes a naturalistic figure and sometimes she is abstracted and maybe a sculpture or painting. The male figure may also be abstracted or only defined as a shadow of the female figure. There are also a sprinkling of dollar signs which introduces a host of other ideas about their relationships.
In this book I introduce the character of the street beggar. This is new. And already he … she … they are interacting with some of my familiar characters.
I won’t tell you what these drawings mean because I myself don’t know. But even if I did, I wouldn’t. The true joy of viewing them is seeing the ideas play peekaboo with you consciousness. You may see something that makes you think it’s this…or that. But is it really clear? Could it also be something else? They invite an aphoristic intelligence rather than the didactic one more suitable to a world of artificial intelligence. These sketches are a place where you are invited to ponder and hold more than one idea about meaning at the same time. They are meant to spark imagination, not conclude it.
I hope they work that way for you and I hope you enjoy that process.
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“Sketch Book”
Various media on paper
18” x 12”
2009
My sketch books often contain drawings that are like a running journal of my unresolved thoughts and feelings. But sometimes they are more practical or utilitarian. In this case, it contains drawings that were made during live modeling sessions held in the dining room of a Bistro I owned between 2008 and 2011. Every Monday night we were closed for regular business and instead I made T bone steaks with a baked potato and frozen peas for $10. And you could either watch or join in sketching the live models posing nude in the middle of the room.
Monday nights became so popular we were selling over 100 steaks on a given Monday. And we had to set up a second seating area in the theater where people could watch aerialists rehearse.
We didn’t have a proper ventilation system so the whole place would fill with the smell of pan seared steaks. The models were suffused in the smokey air of high Renaissance Sfumato.
Somehow, after making steaks for over a hundred people I would still find energy to sketch. But simply sketching the live nude was not enough of a challenge for me. I decided to use ink and a brush where there is no room for mistakes or adjustments. Each placed line must be accurate and have its own intrinsic qualities of line which I call “chi”. “Chi” roughly means “ energy in motion” in Mandarin and is often meant to infer life energy or simply “alive.”
The first few drawings of the male torso are conventional idealized male figures. But the subsequent pages are clearly from the live models. I even recognize some of their individualized bodies. Some are little wonders of draftsmanship and some are just simply flops.
Towards the end there are 2 drawings that became studies for a sculpture I have been wanting to create ever since. It’s a man and a woman embracing with a complex expression of interdependency expressed through their bodies and the way they lean into each other to both at one and the same time support each other but also depend on each other to stay upright. It’s subtle but important. It is a tricky balance just like a real relationship. These little sketches have somehow captured that. Someday I hope to capture these complex set of emotions in a life size sculpture.
