The Poet Sleeps

Before the year ends, here's another new drawing:



Brush & ink on paper, 2006, 12" x 12". Another "eyes closed" kind of head, which is probably a metaphor for the imagination or something (solipsism?). Reminds me in terms of feel of Rilke, which also reminds me I should really finish my unfinished Duino Elegies series of paintings/large painted drawings...maybe in 2007...

Masked

After that last batch, here's something a bit more familiar:



White acrylic on black posterboard, 2006, 15" x 12". One of my "negative" works. I like the odd sense of dislocation that happens when the lines are white & the field is black. From an endless series (many of my series are open-ended).

Bessie

While we're on the subject of odd stuff (post below this one), here's another one that doesn't quite fit into my oeuvre:



Brush & ink on paper, 2006, 12" x 12". I guess what unites this image with the one below is a dark sense of humor that doesn't usually pervade my work as much. I normally avoid irony like the plague (it's so been done), but maybe this is as close as I get.

Sister Ray

This one's an oddity:



Brush & ink on paper, 2006, 12" x 12". I did it the other day. Occasionally, images come out that really don't relate that much to my "mainstream" work, & this is one. But, I thought I'd put it up here. Apologies to the Velvet Underground for stealing their song title (not really) -- there is no discernible relation between the image & the song, except for the title.

Head for Riccardo

Another one (see post below):



Acrylic on board, 2006, 12" x 9". Stephen & Riccardo are two guys in Australia I met over the Internet & kind of lost touch with over the last year.

Head for Stephen

Here's a small painting I did months ago & have been meaning to photograph & upload:



Acrylic on board, 2006, 12" x 9". It's the end of the year & I'm trying to finish off all those little things that built up & never got done. A few more coming...

Bone Tree painting

Here's a new small painting based on the "Bone Tree" image from the sketchbook a few entries below:



Acrylic on board, 10" x 8". Scanned in directly from my flatbed scanner. I'll probably do a larger, more finished version of this at some point (soon?). I hadn't done a color painting for a couple of weeks, so I wanted to get back into that before the end of the year...Happy Holidays, BTW...

Sketchbook page 31 -- Hollow Obelisk

Another page from the new sketchbook:



I'll probably post a few more images from the sketchbook, but at this point I really want to create some new work...

Sketchbook page 98 -- Tower

Another page from the new sketchbook:

Sketchbook page 134 -- Bone Tree

Here's page 134 of the new sketchbook, which I'm entitling "Bone Tree":



This may become a painting or more finished work at some later (or sooner) date...

Page 148 -- Knee 2

Page 148 is a similar image to the one in the previous post. It was actually done first, as I recall:



But, I'm calling it "Knee 2" because I put the other one up first. So, not all the images are so semi-automatic. Sometimes, I would do one & then do its reflection on the facing page in the sketchbook. By "reflection", I mean its counterpart, not mirror image as such.

Page 147 -- Knee

Here's page 147:



I'm calling it "Knee", as that's what it looks like. I did most of these images without too many preconceptions, semi-automatic drawings, I guess. There are lots of body parts, figures, torsos, heads, anthropomorphic objects, landscape bits, & so on. In a way, the usual themes, but also full of little surprises.

Page 33

Here's page 33 from the sketchbook:



It's another headlike object, not surprising, as that's a major theme. I liked the ambiguity in this one -- is the head cut off at the top, or is that some kind of a mouth? FYI, the sketchbook took around a month to complete.

Page count

I've just counted & numbered the pages in the sketchbook. There are 158. The "Head" image below is page 103, FYI. All the drawings are done in brush & ink. I started (mostly) with some fairly random strokes in watery ink, then used dark strokes to fill in the rest of the drawing, not caring too much what I was doing. I'm quite happy with the results. More images to follow shortly...I'm not going to put up all 158 -- just 5 or 6 at this point...