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Drawing 50


I woke up, thinking - what to do today? What does one do when one turns 50? My paints were in my studio, but the only thing that made any sense was to sit myself down right away, and take a good honest look at myself before I had any time to think. I found a watercolor block, and my drawing box and thus began a project of drawing myself every day for my 50th year. To live 50 as a painter, taking a good look each day, whether I have 2 minutes or an hour, and whether I want to or not. And in the way that iterations are not just repetitions but change due to the very fact of being repeated, I will live the year of 50.

Karen Kaapcke, September 2012

The Continuation: I have noticed in this, my 51st year, that I am more my body than ever. Yet I was suddenly barely recognizing it. The need to look at it and 'lean in' with it, to work with it, has become central. As a result, my body is becoming more my own. And more universally representative of the need to be present physically in a way that most women find only happens in the younger, sexy years. 51 = drawing the body.

Karen Kaapcke 3.30.13

A few years later, and I looked into the mirror - and was struck by how foreign my belly was to me. I still don't recognize myself.

Karen Kaapcke 9.20.16

An old friend very recently got me thinking more about drawing as a way of Being in the world (he wrote magnificently about something completely different, and yet not) - and in the ongoing question about what drawing is, this is a deeply satisfying way to frame it. And self-portraiture just magnifies certain issues, which though are always there. The rhetoric of drawing, which includes what marks get made but very importantly what marks don't get made, statements, conjectures and erasures, all yielding a paragraph that exists in time and yet not. And in this sense also I think, one's product is not separate from oneself. And the question: is it done? Is really the question, is this the way of being that I intend.
 5.31.13, self portrait as a way of being, graphite and craypas, 8x9",©Karen Kaapcke 2013

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