Shades of grey - 2024 12 19

 

Pencil crayon, acrylic ink on paper - 4" x 6" cardstock

I never know what is going to happen. I never know how the drawing is going to turn out. 

It doesn't take much to disrupt a creative work flow. Work at my art desk requires quiet, organization, and creative energy. The combination of needing to re-organize the household to get Mom's suite ready for rental, hosting our biggest Neighbourhood Folk event of the year on December 1, and dental surgery completed disrupted my art making capacity. It turns out all the infrastructure I put together to support my creative works while I was looking after Mom are just as important now that I am adjusting to my new life now that Mom is gone.

Last night I finally got my new art desk operational. I managed to get the first layers of grey inks to make a pear card. I had these pears on the window sill in the basement suite last year while I was looking after Mom. Over the course of several days, I took photos of the pears in tableau on the window sill, playing with their positions in relation to the eye of the camera and to each other, and also to the window pane. Now, in these long dark evenings, I can work through these images, and in drawing the images, I also draw out stories from my imagination, stories that help me situate myself to make sense of the disruption, the changes ahead, and what I can hold onto as a touchstone for comfort and inspiration.

There is something to expressive and funny in the figure of a pear. It's long, bending neck, and wide, shapely body. Every pear is unique even as they all embody the same elements. They each have their own character, a personality expressed in the way they sit on the flat window sill. They each express a sense of longing, connectivity, questioning, reaching out, or pulling back inward, depending on their orientation to the window frame. The composition of the pear figure on the window sill in relation to the window frame inspires my own personal narrative, depending on how I am feeling in the moment.

I haven't been drawing for several months. I feel the strangeness of hold the glass pen or brush. I feel the tightness in my hand and fingers as I make my initial marks. I feel the loosening of my grip, the slip of control as the pen brings her own energy to the mark making. I stand back in surprise and contentment to see what has happened in the drawing. 

It takes as much love as I can muster to bring kindness and curiosity to my work. It exists today, that did not exist yesterday. I love that.

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