So it is finished at last. (Full image gallery with details here) The painting has been framed beautifully and is on display at Temple of Visions Gallery (Downtown LA @ 719 S. Spring St. 90014, if you haven’t been). This is a painting I’ve worked on and poured my heart and soul into for many months. I took pictures throughout it’s development and put them together in a video. You can check that out here:

Over the years I’ve compiled a collection of images of art that I find inspiring. I’m particularly interested in artwork that preceded this thing that people call “visionary art.” There was a moment around the late 1800′s when art took a turn from outwards representations to inwards exploration. This was the birth of Modern Art (which, incidentally, seems to have “ended” as a movement in the 50′s. So much for modernity!). Modern Art encompassed all number of motifs and approaches – Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism, Pointilism, Surrealism… So many ISMs!

Below is a link to small online gallery of some of this inspiring artwork. I’ve included some commentary with some of the pieces to share what it is about them that I love. I’ll post a few other galleries soon as there are other visionaries who were creating at the turn of the century that often get lost in the annals of art history.

Inspirations

I’ve carried a sketchbook with me since I was 16. Barring a few rare instances when one was not available, it’s always been a Strathmore sketchbook. The Strathmore seemed to have the nicest texture amongst day-to-day sketchbooks, the spiral binding is durable, the paper strong enough for average (and often times above average) wear and tear. I tried a few hard-backed journal style books here and there. They were decent but they aren’t as handy; the spiral binding and ability to lay flat are important. At some point or another, I decided the 5.5″ x 8.5″ size was best. It packs down well: fitting just about anywhere, seems unobtrusive even sitting on a table with someone else. Larger sketchbooks declare themselves to the world, as well as the mind. The smaller book is a tad more innocuous and, when the mind approaches the empty page it doesn’t seem so daunting. Afterall, this is for sketches – illustrations of a feeling, intimations of a curve of a branch or a hip or the vast plane of awareness that is Mind. If you give it too much space, it’ll freeze up. Give it too little space and it feels cramped. Just enough, so that the window can rest upon the knee without feeling like there are distant corners that need to be filled, and it will submit and surrender itself. Yes, I trick my own mind into unlocking it’s secrets. But I would never tell it this. Only later, in paintings, do I begin to understand what those early sketches might have been insinuating.

This never-ending sketchbook has been carried with me on all journeys, to the most random of situations, and, in the most mundane of places, has opened up spaces in me that I didn’t know were there. It emerges while sitting in a cafe or at a bus stop, riding on a train or a plane, at my desk, waiting in an office, pr pausing during a hike on a mountainside. The images are rarely planned. They ride along a stream of consciousness echoing my emotional and psycho-spiritual state mixed with my general will and momentum. By allowing the drawing its own narrative, the inner visual language expresses itself unhindered. The observant viewer will note the similarities amongst the imagery and different visual symbols and cues that show up over periods of time, again and again.

It just happens. I sit. I observe. I let my eyes relax. I let my mind… I let my mind just be. I set it adrift. I don’t try to force it into anything. I don’t attempt to still it but I don’t attempt to agitate it by thinking such things as  “this had better be good” or “this is going to be a drawing for a painting”. I allow it to be whatever it is: a tidal wave, a simmering fire, a cool breeze, a breath. I notice how I’m sitting. How I’m holding the pen. I do all of these things and, at the same time, none of them: just sit and draw unself-consciously. I allow elements of nearby architecture or the shapes of leaves or roots of trees or a glimpse of a pattern to be points of departure. Our minds are shaped by the world around them as much as by their own preconditions. Why not allow the drawing the same freedom? The surface of the page gives way to a penetrable depth. I allow my instincts and intuitions, however subtle and unknown, to draw me onwards. Everything, however, seeks light for growth. It is nice to allow the drawing the same.

The sketchbook is a meditation tracing mental symbols, stories, and tangents, drawing out underlying connections, seeking, however organically, to find logical conclusions. It has it’s non sequiturs and moments of random association and completely free connectivity. It has moments of clarity, moments of abstraction, moments of pure thought and pure selflessness, and moments of complete, unadulterated, distraction. Then the lines take shape into something that I understand. I could expand on that, I think, I could make a painting out of that.

When I stand in front of my canvas, I flip back through sketchbooks, finding a drawing that speaks to me from a certain place, embodying a direction or vision that I wish to pursue. Only then do the symbols they contain begin to make sense.

Sketchbooks

A selection of drawings from several years worth of sketchbooks. All are drawn with the Pilot V5 pen, a great all-purpose writing instrument. Click the thumbnail to view. Enjoy.

To read more about this gallery, please see this blog post: Sketchbooks