This has been a long time coming. This is but a sample of the new work that I have on the burner at the moment. Some of this is complete, some I am still thinking about. I am also planning on returning to the comics which I am enjoying because they feel like elaborated political cartoons. Perhaps more akin to comic editorials. Also, I am developing a narrative approach which for me is about retaining the weird and personal in the conventions of the comic (or traditional narrative). I am working on a new book which I hope will be ready by early next year. I would love to hear what you think. Thanks for looking!
New Work
6 Aug
Elizabethan Drawings
28 May
Every Thursday at the Society of Illustrators in NYC they have a costumed drawing session. This wonderful event in the magnificent society building is packed with seasoned and beginning artists. The tone was serious but breaks were relaxed with drinks and great conversation. The models were in Elizabethan garb. I couldn’t help but wonder how this decadence with it’s over the top dress and ornaments, was some flamboyant alarm for the impending collapse of the aristocracy (at least as an open institutional power). The same hubris of Wall Street (without the fancy dress) pointed to a collapse but again, we refused to see it. It seems denial is more seductive than reckoning. After the drawing session, I was walking the streets and noted another celebration of decadence, the opening of the latest Sex and the City movie. Like the wealth parade of the Elizabethan era, the Sex and the City girls flaunt excess and even shallow self involvement. Although all of this may seem out of sync with the times, in a city like New York, there are still plenty of people with plenty of money. You can bet when things get a little better, they will be back on the streets with their fancy dress and decadent displays, the scale of which we can only imagine. Well, minus the wigs of course.
This is what I drew. Enjoy.
Joe Six Pack – An American Original
15 Apr
Here is another comic. Enjoy. Please feel free to comment. I would love to know what you think.
Burlesque NYC
12 Apr
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These drawings were done at a Dr.Sketchy event in NYC. It was a fun event. Three hours of drawing what appeared to be professional (or at least semi-professional) burlesque dancers. Being NYC, the quality of the models was quite high. The entire event did have a slightly “canned” quality that lent the drawings a certain staged feel (for me anyway). I realized that I do better when relying on my memory and basically sketching when I am taking the essence of an event as apposed to the posed subject. The stresses of accuracy can often stifle the off-the-cuff vitality in my drawing.The White Man’s Box
9 Apr
This is my first foray into comics. I will be providing a comic a week. Let me know what you think. I broke a lot of pencils making this one. Click on the pages to see them in full.
Memory and Drawing
3 Feb
There is an amazing phenomenon when drawing. We choose our subject. We make a mental notation of physical characteristics, oddities and, a judgment about the subject. Is the person fat, short, happy, sad, confident, or clueless? This is a quick process. Then we draw. The drawing can often be about something very different than a specific caricature. It can be about the joy of drawing a voluminous figure or a pose that we may find interesting or applicable in another creative product. What emerges however is indelibly linked to the original subject. It shows that our brains have already managed, even with the interference of our own agendas, to capture an essence of the subject. It has led me to think about the remarkable speed of the brain and hand. Training speeds this connection, of that I have not doubt, but beyond that, I wonder about the memory trace that our drawings hold. It has been said that we live on beyond death until the last person, known or unknown, mutters our names. I wonder about the persistence of the people in our drawings.
The Drawn Out Debate – A Happy New Year in Drawing
30 Dec
As a draftsperson working in the modern world (although ignoring a considerable chunk of its visual culture) I am regularly considering the significance of drawing in relation to other media and how drawing itself is being pushed and often re-imagined by artists. The debate has been clearer than the problems that have spawned the debate.
The debate is anchored in two deeply held beliefs. One, that drawing is a practice utilizing traditional materials and built on an observational craft typically grounded in the acquisition of representative drawing skills. Those skills based on well defined western ideals. From a foundation of traditional skills, the artist can then depart on one’s own and develop into an art maker with a singular voice.
The other belief is that drawing is indistinct from all other art making activity. Where the previous belief puts drawing at the center of the creative process, (or at least an independently important endeavor) they see drawing indistinguishable from installation art or painting and see it as fluid, above and perhaps beyond the limitations and restrictions of craft.
While this is an oversimplification of an important debate, it does show the inherent problems with both arguments. While the traditionalist may believe that the contemporary approach to drawing is resulting in half-born art, lacking in a fundamental understanding of form and therefore a mere exercise rather than a grounded piece of the art continuum, the contemporary artist sees that as an archaic limitation to a more expansive view of drawing as the delineation of just about anything and that this perspective expands the art and practice of “drawing for drawings sake”. Either way, both parties, stuck in their ideological camps, are failing to see the bigger problem. That problem is quality.
I could talk about quality and the guardians at the gate, (seemingly asleep at their post) but I am interested in something else. As we are getting warmed up in the twenty first century, I propose that drawing take on more important matters. For one, I believe it is important to look at drawing as a distinctive activity bringing a level of personal expression and communication that achieves what no other medium is capable of; an encapsulated autobiographical record (Berger) of the artists thoughts and intentions. Whether that is in the form of a line of bricks in a gallery installation or a pencil drawing on a napkin in a bar, we need to renew our love of a media that is, at its core, profoundly human and filled with the surprise and invention that result from the mysterious connection between mind and hand.
I say we re-dedicate ourselves to pushing our media and make the power of drawing self evident.
Drawings above are from recent trips to England and Spain.
Tags: reportage drawing, drawing, pencil sketches, debate, contemporary art
It’s morning in America
24 Nov
Having realized that negativity in blogs is par for the course, I am making a conscious effort to bring optimism and sunshine into this usually dark corner of the cyber world. The modern world, as embodied in American culture, is a world full of infinite possibility and wonderment. The small and large screens that demand our attention are making us more flexible problem solvers and creative thinkers. We are okay. We are great in fact.
The ever fluid American culture has been a baffling subject for me for quite some time. I have been a sideline jester for too long. However, to engage the culture full-on is to dance with a hungry lion. I am already a little chewed up. I am seeking to distance myself from the depression porn of news and opinion and strive towards a worldview less gloomy (albeit less accurate). I want to be like everyone else.
So going forth, my drawings will carry with them the jaundiced eye of a disappointed citizen but I will look up, not down in my orientation toward the future. I will look ahead and avoid the open manholes of despair and defeatism, skipping towards Main Street maybe even picking up a flat screen TV on my way (I could really use one. Currently squinting at a 13 inch tube!).
Still, I sharpen my pencils and save my energy for what is surely the coming era of Palin. Or, as I like to call it, Thatcher part deux. There are still challenges but maybe the sand in my ears will make the screams a little dimmer. Here’s to turning over a new leaf and wiping all that crap off of it.
Enjoy these random drawings.
Torture – Through the channels
22 Apr
This is a piece specifically created for a book about torture. The idea came from a well known Norman Rockwell painting called Gossip. In Rockwell’s painting, a juicy bit of gossip is spread through a town and eventually the source found and chastised. In my version, the directive to torture is passed through several people and the result is…well, torture. I was interested in the bureaucracy of torture. It has to start somewhere and likely, it was a decision that shocked, thrilled and dismayed different parties. Still, it went forward and still does to this day.
Tags: americans, caricature, drawing, louis netter, Norman Rockwell, satire, social commentary