some drawings

I continue to draw, as I have for 45 of my 50 years. For the last 34 years I have pursued an approach to drawing that encourages accident and experimentation - working faster than I can think. I have had spurts of progress during this time - some regresses or black holes, but I've continued forward progress. In the words of my therapist, "drawing [myself] out of unhelpful places."
My art is my compass. Perhaps for a time I sought the certainty of theology - especially stringent systematic theologies - but some of those have been the very black holes of subjectivity [as Deleuze would say] my art has drawn me out of.
To be able to draw and express myself visually has been life to me. The visual has brought to speech concepts that I could not have broached.
I would say, with these drawings, the meaning isn't necessarily in the content. The meaning is in the doing.
At times, as in CPE groups, some have viewed my drawing with suspicion - as if I weren't listening. But this has not been the case. I listen better when I'm drawing.
Tonight I'm driving into Raleigh to draw from a live model for the first time in years. It'll be fun and a bit challenging. The human figure is a puzzle, every day offering new solutions.

two drawings

I called these drawings ink and ink2 and when I did them, two summers ago, my pen was wearing out. Because the tube in the technical pen was bent and worn after much use, the flow of ink was problematic. My typical effort to create flow was to take the nib apart, rinse in water, and reassemble it - a time consuming process I don't recommend to people without patience. I loved these messy results as I drew not just with the pen but with the ink that had become smeared on my hands and fingers.

I may have several thousand of these

I don't know how many drawings I have until I begin to collect come for a show. I'll hit 50 and realize that there are so many more to choose from. I'm certain that I could do ten groups of 50. I wonder if I could do 50 groups of fifty? Perhaps. I've been working on this for years. If I were a writer I'd be closing in on Proust. The great American novel in picture form. An extended Portnoy's Complaint. The Great American Nude goes Fishing.

I'm an artist

I have been drawing most of my life. I remember when I was 9, I gessoed a piece of hardboard and painted the height of my aspirations: a pirate, in my closest approximation to what I thought Rembrandt did (albeit with no idea of glazing and scumbling techniques) - a painting that still hangs in the hall of my dad's house.
These three images are more recent. The bottom one has been reproduced here before: "out of chaos" is a painting I performed during a week of chapel services at CTS right after Katrina. Karen and Bruce Miller now own it and it hangs in their front dining room/parlor.
The middle image is a small painting (the out of chaos is 4 x 5 feet, this painting is more like 16 x 20 inches) of an interior at a bar. Chester Topple now owns it and where he has it at his house, I don't know.
And the top image is a water color (the other two paintings are acrylic) about 8 x 10 of Lucretia, holding the knife, about to plunge it in. It's unsold and it's lying around here somewhere.
I realized that I haven't posted much art lately - actually June was pretty slim for me posting anything.
Enjoy.
There are certainly aspects of these images, the process used, the subject matter, that I hope to combine and continue. Right now I have an easel set up on our screened porch and I'm going out there soon and begin to paint. I haven't painted (I've drawn plenty) since I closed my studio in Decatur.
Mostly I've drawn complex scenes with multiple figures on a 12 inch square sheet of paper, scenes influenced by Breugel and Thomas Nast: scenes satirical, bombastic, and large scale/small size.