A small selection of recent work: palm-tree drawings from Sharm El Sheikh, experiments with a single line, and paintings that follow the last fragments of a dream.
These are some of the things that have been on my mind over the past month. Some remained sketches; others developed into more finished works. I will keep the commentary short this time. I suspect I have been testing my readers’ patience with too many words lately.
Palm Trees and Calligraphic Gestures
I always pack drawing materials for a holiday, though I rarely use them. This time I made seven or eight sheets of studies of the palm trees outside my hotel window. I am pleased to see my own handwriting becoming more apparent in the sketches.
That handwriting owes a great deal to my calligraphic exercises, which I discussed in Between Calligraphy and Painting and Red Dao and Black Zen. In the palm studies, the trunks and fronds give the marks something to respond to without determining every detail.
This led to a small series of gestural drawings that I also think are worth showing.
The next experiment begins with 一 (yī), the Chinese character for “one”. A slight swing in a horizontal stroke can suggest more than a flat line. Here I let that movement expand into a broader composition, with black and turquoise marks pulling across the white ground.
Continuing that thought led to the work below. The virtual gallery shows it enlarged; the actual work is much smaller than this setting suggests.
Desert, Sea and the End of a Dream
After returning from Sharm El Sheikh, I also wanted to work with my impressions of desert and sea. The working title of the first painting was Dance through the Desert and the Sea. Dark movements cross the turquoise and pale areas, bringing the two environments into one unsettled space.
While working on it, I was already thinking about a series of morning moods: what remains in the mind just before the eyes open and the last pieces of a dream disappear. In When the Dream Comes to an End, scattered forms hang in a mostly white field. Early Morning Mood gives the marks more colour and movement, while Emerging from the Layers of the Dream returns to a denser blue surface.
Extra: Looking Closely
I took plenty of photographs too. In my earlier Egypt photographs, sand and stones had held my attention. This time, I kept coming back to palm trunks: overlapping surfaces, fibres and changes in light.
I had not intended to photograph stones again. This one, beneath the moving light of shallow water, made that resolution difficult to keep.
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Between Calligraphy and Painting · Petra and Sharm El Sheikh Trip · Back from Egypt Trip – Stones and Sands
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