Happy Anniversary - 2024 03 22

 

Watercolour paper, graphite, pencil crayon, acrylic paint, pen and ink - 9" x 11"

I have mixed feelings about this piece. I forgot to take a progress photo after I added the ground colour and before I added the warm reds to the subject and then continued to elaborate with white and black ink.

I was really happy with the original idea, of a bonded pair sitting perched on a wire, each looking in different directions but sitting in close proximity to each other. That feeling of, "Give me space but don't go too far away." The delicate balance amongst autonomy, solitude and loneliness. 

It is thinking about relationships, position, connection, confidence, empowerment, belonging, and self worth that is inspiring this exploration.

It is also awareness of the feeling of foreboding that permeates each day. This feeling of precarious balance amongst stability, inspiration and dread. 

The stability of having a home address, of having a daily routine, of somehow maintaining that consistency day after day, the despite a constant fear of stability turning into boredom and ennui. Facing the dread of filing taxes and paying bills. Finding contentment in sweeping and washing the floor, folding and putting away clean laundry, scrubbing the toilet. Accepting the inevitability of figuring out, "What is for dinner?"

The excitement of feeling inspired by an idea, of feeling the incoming tide of feel-good hormones - dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin - that comes with imagining a new project, meaningful work, experimentation, exploring. The satisfaction that follows completing a creative work, of sitting back and thinking about what emerged, chuckling at the surprise of a feeling or thought revealed in the work.

The dread of contemplating the inevitability of life and death unfolding every day. Gratitude that members of my family have been spared for another 24 hours. Horror at reports of atrocities perpetrated by state-sanctioned murder. Knowing that nature does not judge, is not fair, and is operating on principles of physics and thermodynamics that are far greater than my minuscule physical body.

These figures are built up of many layers, each layer struggling to define the shape of the body and the spirit of the living being in relation to the amorphous conditions of their emergence. 

In this drawing, I spent much more time struggling to bring the figures to life than I did colouring in the background of light emerging from the depths. 

Somehow, in the midst of all these struggles for definition, meaning, and impermeability, there is light on the horizon. I will look to that light. Happy Anniversary 2024.