Late Summer Update
I will gradually update the blog with all my self-portraits from the summer. Many things became clear during this period. My drawings began to point further away from myself. I found myself thinking - beyond the question of 'what is drawing' that began to emerge last spring - 'what is paper?', what is this surface doing, between the marks and the world, supporting the marks even as it puts up a barrier. Like skin, but always refusing to be like skin. There was, during the summer, one star-filled night when I sat on the balcony and wondered, as I've been doing since about 10 years old - and I saw the drawings as I see the stars - each a small spot representing so much, and yet so unreachable to the mind. In a further clarification to what I had begun to feel last spring, as I sit down to draw, I find myself more and more unreachable, and yet the drawing - the attempt at drawing - is the need to reach out and understand nonetheless.
When I reached my 51st birthday, after doing a self-portrait each day for the previous year, I could not imagine stopping. The date seemed arbitrary, and it's the drawings that get to have the last word.
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