Series A - Pen Drawings, 2008-2010

Woman Emerging from the Thicket, 2009, 18 x 13.2 cm. Light-weight paper. 

My first pen drawing, part of a series, 18 works in all, from 2009-2010.  Series A-1.

My explorations with the pen begin here with a dominant figure surrounded by chaotic, yet orchestrated lines suggesting movement and characters involved in their own stirrings.  Somehow they are swept together.  A slice of time blends characters and scenes that appear to dance as if glued to the surface of an unseen larger image that holds it in place, providing the energy these organisms need to exist and persist.

I'm excited to share this series with you and look forward to your comments.  Thank you. 

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A Horse Runs Up The Mountain. 2009. New York. 18x13.2cm. Pen. Series A-2.

How does a goal come into focus?  And why does one goal become more preferable than another?  Is it based on mere survival, the common churning and yearning that drives living beings and flora to develop ever more effective approaches to living, of improving their quality of life?  Visible here is a progression, from valley, guarded by an extending tree-trunk, up to mountains glowing with future promise. A bird-like creature helps guide the horse safely to its goal: the peak. But a horse has little reason to charge up to the mountaintop.  Something else has caught the horse’s attention above the mountaintop.  This is a fable of reaching beyond the observable and for something one perceives to be within reach, but is perhaps more a part of their imagination, which has created a powerful drive to climb higher, to explore, to unite the solid internal nature of living beings, the mind, with the will to connect with external forces.  Connection with external elements, secular or ethereal, suggests searching for a source of validity of one’s life.  

Goat and his Farmer. 2009. New York. 18 x 13.2 cm. Pen.Series A-3.

The farmer in profile and his skeleton is all that remains from his wayward goat, which has eaten almost every ounce of muscle and organs from his defenseless body.  The drab, expressionless farmer seems somehow relieved to shed his earthly form.  The goat becomes his captive savior.  Like the artist himself, the farmer shifts roles to relate viscerally with generations of artists who’ve suffered their master’s requirements while sneaking some time for their other interests beyond mere survival. The goat, slightly above and left of the farmer, shows its exaggerated darkened eye and vertical pupil, one that so vigorously enjoys the loom of its captive feast. But how did the farmer become captive?  He lost a wager with two vagabond angels, cupids in fact, that fell from a heavy sky onto a branch in one of the farmer’s fields.  Mesmerized, the farmer joined in a long night of “story-telling” with the angels, which found him elevating beyond his worldly body for a time.  Seeing the farmer vulnerable and seemingly occupied elsewhere, the goat feasted.  

 

A man and his selves (Hollow Man). 2008. New York. Pen on Paper. 18 x 13.2 cm Series A-4

Rooted to an invisible ceiling, a hollow man evolves as two separate selves.  His outer self manifests as a human interface that manages various things, like work, friends and romance; his inner self is where all the wild stuff happens, desires rise, intentions form, reactions occur.  He tries to remain hollow, ready to adapt and cope with new circumstances, but things keep growing on him, forcing him to constantly manage nature’s inertia in a biologically sticky world.  Luckily, Hollow Man can manifest helpful characters: a sexy blonde woman floats in his inner eye’s mind-space, balancing his moods; and a teenage antelope that forms his right ear guards both thoughts (inner) and actions (outer).  A fire-like substance appears in his throat that keeps biology at bay and channels his mind’s experiences and visions into a passion-rich life.