Trying to ... allow ...

"Trying to understand is
like straining through muddy water.
Be still and allow the mud to settle."
Lao Tzu

 

 

 

 

Wasp

 

 

 “We have a belief that we need not believe in, no dogmas, no ritual, no mythology, no church, no priest, no holy book--what a relief!”
― Frederick Franck 

97_2021-6-30_3:20am Alarm

 

 5x7" oil over acrylic on canvas panel

  
   3:20 AM June 30, approximately 18 hours after my first Moderna jab, and about 20 hours  after my last dose of precious beautiful delicious coffee - to which I am powerfully  'addicted,' - (I mention both of these factors because, for all I know, either could be implicated) an ALARM went off in my mind, sounded like my malfunctioning doorbell, almost a  ding-dong but garbled, more of an electric hum with tones trying to bubble up through it,  like it's underwater, but this time it was LOUD and right through my  head; at the same  instant an image flashed, clear as if I was standing in front of it, but right in my eyes,  like the sound was right through my ears. One second or less and I was  wide  awake.
   

 I tried to reproduce the image, but I'm not that good with watercolor & ink wash, so that one failed, and I had to get it right. The green was very insistently definite.  I finally got at least very close, had to resort to my trusty oil paint, and even that was on top of an attempt with acrylic.

 I was in the process of weaning myself down from coffee, because of stomach problems, so I  could have been well into withdrawal, which can get weirder than most imagine. But it's  never been as psychedelic as this. It's been 2 weeks and nothing like that has happened again, and I've been even deeper into coffee withdrawal. The only new element in the mix is, um, the vaccine. Another week and a half I get jab #2...

 What a time to be alive.

 

98_2021-7-15

 

 

 Oil on canvas 7" x 5" 

"It is exactly the no-way-out situation in which the human being finds itself - that fundamental and unbridgeable inner cleavage of that being which is conscious of itself - that is said to be the way . . ."
  - Shin'ichi

Creek Tree Shade

 

HB pencil in 8.5x5.5" sketchbook. Out at Harmon's Field yesterday, about 30 minutes toughing it out, "in the field,"(sitting in my car with the AC going), then some touch-ups back at home, trying to save it from being a scruffy mess.

I'm clearly out of practice.

I recently did some reading and video watching on 'notan' and 'chiaroscuro' and concluded, who needs fancy terms when all you gotta do is look. Well I think I just found out who. Might have served me well in simplifying my lights and darks, prevented that rather chaotic scratchiness in the tree foliage, if I'd pulled those tools out of the box.

At least this part looks pretty good. To me.

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"Practicing's good in theory. In reality it just tires us out." --Hank Yarbo 😂

"Wall Street" Paragould style

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Pencil in 5.5x8.5" sketchbook. Small town humor; "Wall Street" is what we used to call 2nd Ave., because in Paragould's heyday as a railroad town, the depot was right in back of buildings like the one pictured above, and that whole block was warehouses and such, chocked full of freight and it was what put us on the map. So, take 'at New York City! 😉

I don't remember if the depot had been torn down yet, the day I made this sketch, but it was long in disuse either way. At one time, in my youth, I think this building housed a retail outlet for some brand of bread and snack cakes. Something is still there, but it doesn't look like this.

And for some reason, I guess I was thinking hard on it that day, I associate this drawing with a trip I made 6 days later, to the picture frame factory outlet store in Pocahontas, during which I spotted the subject of the sketch below. It was around 11 am, she and two young men came into the motel coffee shop I was in, looking like they just made it out of the room in time for check-out, after a night of ... revelry. A disheveled lot they were, but she caught my eye and I sat in the car afterwards and tried to sketch her from memory. I think I got the haggard look, at least.

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"Sea" shell ...?

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Ballpoint pen in 6x4" sketchbook. I don't remember if it came in a pack or I found it in the yard. Either way. I like how the back-lighting produced a glow you can see right through it, especially in the open end there. Wonder who made it home.

 

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"Once we start to draw, all of a sudden we begin to see again. Were we so blind? How could we have ignored the beauty, the intricacies of these 'simplest things' ... The moment the eye opens up, all becomes equally fascinating, equally inspiring, equally pregnant with meaning."
— Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing: Meditation in Action, Frederick Franck

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Starfish

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Back when I was married, there were magnets on the fridge. One was a starfish. One of its arms fell off, broke off. I drew a picture of it, evidently with an HB pencil, in an 8.5" x 5.5" sketchbook, on the 25th day of January, 2008. 

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"I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful." --John Constable.

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Dump Truck 1993

 

 Pencil, 8.5" x 5.5" sketchbook 

Made in the Shade: Main St.

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"The eye does not judge, moralize, criticize. It accepts ... the long bamboos being long, the goldenrod being yellow.”
― Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing

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Liq_

 

16" x 20" acrylic and Liquin on canvas. Possibly finished, possibly underpainting for an action passage to come ... 

I'm starting to wonder if what's left of my interest in painting is perhaps more spiritual than artistic, and may in fact have always been.

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