today, dear reader, you might like to take a peek inside this recent travelling sketchbook...
last weekend i started & subsequently filled this most diminutive of sketchbooks with some simple line drawings... each sketch is 10cm x 14.5cm...
travelling with a pocket-sized sketchbook and an ink pen...
here is a selection of some of those small sketches...
observing & remembering the patterns of the natural world...
such as an old olive tree, slightly leaning, its bark gnarled...
or watching below, where the water flows...
and where the earth grows...
where something can be found...
from looking down, at the ground...
or somewhere way up high...
in the dark infinity of a sky...
still seeing clouds, in the rise above them...i really like the limitation of size - but it is not planned that way, nor perhaps is it even relevant to my paintings, but if someone was to pack me off to greenland on a drawing expedition i would probably be very happy to go... every artist should draw something everyday for it enables one not just to observe but to think singly & deeply about something, even just for a short time...i always find myself reminded by the simple process of drawing how sometimes it seems so difficult to really understand how another person might think, feel or respond to something, how difficult it is to communicate a personal sense of something that has no adequate means to describe it; but artists will always try and this is what makes art so special...a while back i conveyed to a very accomplished artist how i felt i had come to a crossroads with anything created in the abstract (i have had similar conversations with many people), about how i felt i was not always succeeding in conveying a genuine feeling about something, without resorting to the means of illustration... there was no answer other than trying to find a new way of getting an aspect of my character into the work... i do not want to drastically change course, but rather i want to consolidate the voice that is undeniably and uniquely me... i guess the truth is, i already have it but i won't find it by looking elsewhere...