Presence: I can’t say I feel much like writing lately. What I have been doing, instead, is wandering through my art books, inviting line and colour to fill me up. I have a new sketchbook from the Brooklyn Art Library waiting for me, and no ideas yet around what this book needs from me. The ideas will come. They always do.
While I wait, I am reading and delighting in other artists’ work. Two days ago, the book was Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg. Yesterday it was Arthur Rackham: A Life With Illustration, and today it’s Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings. The book planned for tomorrow is Jim Dine: Flowers And Plants. My taste in artists ranges wide, the common elements being colour (as much as I can get) and line.
Absence: Grief keeps ambushing me. I’m okay, then I’m not okay, then I’m okay. Insert some rude words here.
I have discovered I have no patience with feeling sad for very long. After two or three hours, I am compelled to go find something to cheer me up again. I wondered if I am simply denying how I feel, but I think not, mainly because when the moment hits me again, I feel it fully. No one told me grief was a roller coaster, or maybe this is only my version of grieving.
Absence and presence: A few days ago, I hung a small drawing by the living room entryway. I created this drawing for my Dad when I was halfway through art school. It was his seventieth birthday, and I could see the influence of his example in the subject matter I chose for my class assignments, why I was fascinated by still life and the everyday objects I used in my life. The drawing was a thank you to him, my first art teacher.
Every time I walk by the drawing, I remember him.
And now there is no more to say.
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In this post:
Book Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg edited by Michael Darling, Skira Rizzoli Publications, New York, 2017.
Book Arthur Rackham: A Life With Illustration by James Hamilton, Pavilion Books, London, 2010.
Book Turner Monet Twombly: Later Paintings by Jeremy Lewison, Tate Publishing, London, 2012.
Book Jim Dine: Flowers And Plants by Marco Livingstone, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1994.
