Specific Drawings

Snowblind

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Here is the newest piece, entitled Snowblind. It consists of 4 separate drawings that form one continuous work.Each drawing is 19 x 19 inches - pencil on Arches hot press watercolor paper, the outer edges embellished with bone beads (literally beads that are made from bone, about 5,760 of them, but who is counting). The drawings will be framed separately and are intended to be spaced about 5 inches apart:

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Work in progress

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A quick look at a drawing in progress: this is the first piece of a four-part drawing (the correct, yet rather unwieldy, art term is polyptych).  It is not completely finished - I will not resolve all of the values until all four drawings are complete and I can see them spread out together. Graphite on paper, 18 x 18 inches, the working title is Snowblind:

and the detail:

New drawing finished...well, sort of...

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I have finished a drawing:

"And then we devoured our young"
graphite on Arches hot press paper
16 x 48 inches

Some details (my point-and-shoot camera...not the best photos):

And, by "finished", I mean that I am done with it for now. I am going to turn it against the wall in the studio for a few weeks so I can look at it at another time with a fresh eye. Occasionally, I get bogged down in the minute details and overall value relationships - to the point that my eyes cross* - and it becomes too difficult for me to objectively look at the drawing in progress. I have fixed all of the issues raised by  my critique group, and even a few more that I found, so it is time to stop.

*My eyes may be crossing because I need glasses...I have to look into that (pun intended).

Of course there is the little matter of the next piece now on my easel - part one of a four-panel drawing that I just had to start as soon as possible...pooh to the one that may or may not be done, it is time for me to move onward.

I am still smitten with Francisco Goya; specifically the painting Saturn Devouring His Son which has been in the back of my mind while working on the above drawing:

And then there is the slightly more polished, yet no less disturbing, Peter Paul Rubens version of the same subject: 

Oh my, those were two magnificent painters...fluid, raw, painterly...swoon. I think this subject is both at their best: paintings that are based in mythology, yet suggestive of a greater truth, reflecting the dark corners of the psyche of humankind.

The Vigil

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The Vigil

Graphite pencil on Arches hot press watercolor paper

48 x 20 inches

A couple of details:

[Yes, I got the memo proclaiming that women who want to be taken seriously as artists should not use nesting or egg imagery in their artwork because it is too womanly and otherwise unacceptable as subject matter.  I tore that memo up and threw it into the trash can in my studio – the trash can that sits on top of my old copy of H.W. Janson’s "History of Art" – you know, one of the early editions with about 5 women artists mentioned in the span of 10,000 years of art history?  It makes a fabulous leaf press, by the way, which happens to be why it is under the trash can (extra weight to press those pretty fall leaves even flatter)].
Alas, speaking of art history, the early representations of gorgons were very ugly creatures that were used as protective guardians over sacred spaces (temples and the like). 

Artist renderings of gorgons gradually evolved into more beautiful creatures, but their expressions became fiercer.  I am quite fond of both the Bernini and the Caravaggio Medusas: 

 

So, there is some liberty taken with my representation of the mythological gorgon - let's say its a reclamation of a mythical gorgon – for this is a protective, maternal being lost in its own reverie; the ferocity lies dormant, but ever-present, beneath the surface.