Black and White

The following three drawings were done while teaching my night class at FIT.

DRINK AND DRAW

Drawing in Vasac’s while hanging out with friends and artists.

It’s midday, a thin crowd, mostly regulars. There’s a Twins game on. The other flat screen is playing a Manchester United game. Tompkins Square is just starting to bloom across the street and the light strengthens as clouds pass. This woman stops in for a Manhattan, a little paperwork and to make some phone calls. Using this dusty vine charcoal feels just like painting and the simplification feels like maturity.

SELF. MICHIGAN

Each year, sometime around my birthday, I do a self portrait. This is for 2010. Today is my birthday. The shirt that I’m wearing carries a great deal of significance. I grew up in NY, but many of the new comers to NYC are from the Mid West. Amazingly, it seems like most are from Michigan!? To what used to be hardened neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, these “newcomers” bring a revived spirit of kindness, curiosity, business, and incognizance of what was, in many cases, a violent past. They bring with them a fresh start. I realize that I’m always shedding, healing and beginning again. I so embrace these new values. Wearing this shirt reminds me that I’m not my past, my story is always changing, and I’m getting closer to finding my way home.

KEEPING A JOURNAL

Absolutely, I draw everyday. Luck would have it that I ride the subway. This is truly “life drawing”.

After Rubens.

Very often there’s something about another artist or work of art, that strikes a deep, deep chord. In order to get closer to it we copy. My interest is not in mimicking Ruben’s style or touch. I use my own. It’s not a recitation, it’s a conversation. I was the type of boy who loved to listen to the stories of the various men in my family and neighborhood; my grandfather, my neighbor Duke, my best friends father Mr Hill. In someways by copying, I’m sitting on the curb again, listening to Mr. Rubens talk about art, his models, what’s on his easel, what’s important to him. Turns out that the women on the right, in this first drawing is Susanna Fourment. She was the sister of his second wife. To Susanna’s right, our left is my girlfriend Mel. She was working on a client presentation. I like the two ladies living in my book side by side having there own conversation.

Observational studies.

Normally I don’t like to refer to my drawings as sketches. For me, somehow, the word sketch diminishes their significance. But as time goes on, journaling, sketchbooking, drawing on location, has taken on new significance and has developed a broad audience, as well as an army of practitioners.

I’ve always referred to my sketchbook as my train book, having done most of the drawings on the train commuting into Manhattan. Until fairly recently, working from life, in real time, observing the figure, its rhythms, it’s form, organizing the light, has been the sole goal of my practice. Here is a page of observational studies done on the BX7 bus during my daily commute.