A humble reminder - 2025 02 10

 803 am

This morning the sky is clear. We are in our winter cold snap. The temperature is below freezing. 

My bruises and sprains from tripping over a dog crate on Saturday night are starting to heal. Last night I backed into the corner of the open dishwasher door and gave my ankle a nasty bump. These are what I call ‘out of body’ experiences. 

Last night I made another Celtic knot drawing. For some reason, this is the topic I am inspired to explore right now. I selected a knot at random from the book. I noticed it had two open ends, so i added to the design by closing the ends and turning the knot into a continuous loop. I can see now that if I had left the ends open, they would have made a connective point for additional links in an elaborate chain. 

I transfer the grid marks on my drawing paper by pricking through the grid print to make holes in the drawing paper. I make the grid on my drawing program and print it out for transfer. This grid pattern is a larger scale that previously. I wanted to see what would happen if I gave myself more space for making the knot design. 

After the design was laid out I used my lino roller to flatten the paper and remove the indentations of the pin pricks.

The colours of inks were Indigo Blue, Raw Umber and Sepia. These I mixed with an eye dropper in different concentrations to give a range of muted colours and tones. A couple of passes I added water to each segment of the line, making the intensity of the line colour lighter with each segment. It was too subtle and I couldn’t see any difference from beginning to end. The acrylic ink dries waterproof. I also used a blue pen with water soluable ink.

To make the drawing marks, I used a glass pen, an eye dropper, brushes and a Pilot Rollingball pen .05. I also used an eyedropper tube to blow the ink from the ink drops to make oranic tracings. I also used a blotting cloth and the lino roller to mop up excess ink from one layer to the next.

While I was making the drawing I wasn’t thinking about what it meant or signified. I wan’t making meaning, I was making a drawing and puzzling out the overlapping lines to see what their path revealed. I was lost in the process of making marks and figuring out what to add next.

This morning, as I orient myself to another day, I see the drawing in a new light, the morning light. I see the structure and convoluted intricasies of the celtic knot design. I see how the continuous knot gives shape to several interconnected shapes. The overall knot is a rectangle on its side at the bottom of the page. Contained within this rectangle are two distinct squares created by two interconnecting lines, these lines follow a trianglular and spheric path from end to end.

I can see that the single line of blue ink, blurring at the edges, traces one edge of the line and from one end of the design to the other it shifts from interior to exterior edges. 

The splatter marks and spill tracings in the background reflect the colours of the knot but are lighter in tone. The character of these marks are diametric to the marks of the knot drawing. The knot drawing is constrained by the design. The splatter and spill marks are constrained by the laws of nature: gravity, viscosity, air pressure, surface tension, absorbancy. 

The knot design is a human construction. It exists in human imagination, technology, and design. The spills and splatters are a construction of nature. They exist in nature and result from method, technique and allowing nature to take its course.

I woke up from a vivid dream this morning wherein I was aggressively backing a malignant narcissist against a wall with my argument for humility. That, as leaders, we need to demonstrate humility or we are not creating a self-sustaining, egalitarian society. Humility is one of keys to survival as a social system, as a functioning society.

By taking a close look at this small drawing, I understanding something that I did not understand when I was making it. What I understand is revealed in the meaning I make from looking more closely and thinking about the significance of my sense of who I am and my place in the world, today.

If I am to live in harmony, in synchronicity, with nature, I need to be humble. I need my humility to remind my convoluted, intricate brain that I don’t know everything. In fact, there is much more that I don’t know than I do know. The delicate tracings of nature are essential to my survival. I live within the spatters and spillways of the natural world.

When I am out of touch with my body and too much in my mind, I am also out of nature. I am literally out of touch. I trip, fall, and bump into things. These are my ‘out of body’ experiences.

My drawing is telling me to be humble. it is drawing my attention to find balance in my relationships with myself, the world, and the eternal forces of nature.