Something Uncharted, from July 2008
To start a watercolor and ink piece, I will sometimes bring different elements of shape together and then use it as a platform to create. The shapes’ configuration inspires a visual dialogue enhanced by free association. The shapes are empty and I get to draw in them, on them, and outside the lines; one instance feeds another, until I feel that the drawing is complete. I then move on to watercolor, after the ink is completely dry. Each step has its own stopping point, and I try to listen to a still, small, voice inside of me that lets me know when it’s time to stop.
This beginning form of abstract shapes, gives me the welcomed structure to let my memory and imagination run loose. When you really let go in a piece, you not only enjoy yourself more but your product is usually better in the end, too! The only time I really kill a piece, is when I can’t let go for some reason or another (and of course the reasons vary)!
When I was as a child, around the second grade, I would draw heavy lines of crayon color along the inward part of a shape, following the lines of the drawing. This gave me a great border from which to fill in the shape easily without going out of the lines. I loved it and was consumed by it.
I wonder how these childhood experiences of being taught to “stay in the lines” have formed our adult minds. Of course our drawings looked better when we stayed within the lines while we were kids; it took discipline to do so. But, after you have learned to “stay within the lines”, isn’t it time to begin taking the calculated risks of hashing out something new–something outside of the lines; to discover something uncharted? This might be what the abstractionists were attempting to do in the 1920’s (e.g. Picasso or Willem de Kooning).
But even before I lay down any line or color in a painting, I think I primarily try and quiet myself down, to let my thoughts come to a slow roll, even quieter still to let me just sit there and be for a moment; before I let pen to paper or brush to canvas. My utmost intention in my artwork is to be true to myself and to the one who created us; to reveal both in the hidden language of line and color and form.
“He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.”
Romans 8:27-30 (Remix version)
