I typically find the words of Eastern philosopher,
Jiddu Krishnamurti, quite profound. As an exception, and if I've understood him as intended, he once observed that churning out works of art struck him as a way in which the human brain avoids observing. While many of the philosophical journeys Krishnamurti shared ring true for me, this does not. Perhaps, not being inclined to artistry, he was making an assumption about it. I suspect he did not actually sit down and draw and find out what artistic production is all about, but made the conjecture by observing others who had. If he had had the experience of producing works of art, he'd have found that, to produce an accurate image of a thing takes an exceptionally deep observational approach.
The challenge of art is not so much the steadiness of the hand, but the steadiness of the intuition. Moreover, taking the accurate image of something in the mind's eye and then conveying it in a surrealistic way takes a certain profound understanding that's difficult to describe. The ability to observe some intrinsic quality in a thing may very well inspire the drawing of its essence, so to speak: the quality of the thing that allows us to feel it with intensity. For example, the saturation of color and light, and how these play across the landscape are
qualities in a sunset that seem to move everyone universally.
Often, I draw while looking at one of my own photographs. Sometimes I draw a composite of images, creating something new, but still based on something actual. Very occasionally, I will create something that is surreal. But when I draw, that is, reproduce something my eyes perceive or my brain has recorded based on something my eyes have seen, I'm not thinking, "What species of flower is that?" or, "What was the name of the place in the picture?" I'm looking for the fact of the thing: What is (or was) the color? How does (or did) the light or shade play on the subject?
The drawing pictured here is based on a photo I took at the
National Arboretum in Washington, DC, mid-Spring, 2009. Taking the photo required the close observation of these tiny flowers popping up along the edges of a walkway. Drawing this subject took a different type of observation. I had to match the colors as they present themselves in both light and shade, for each facet of the image. I had to determine which lines were objects and which were shadows of those objects. I also determined what from the photo I might decide to leave out or alter slightly--the beauty of drawing rather than photographing, or photographing and PhotoShopping, depending on your perspective. The truth is, if there is any sort of success in the effort, my thinking brain shuts off completely when I am drawing, or for that matter, photographing. In its place, a deeper sort of intuitive operation takes over.
And maybe that is the significant draw of art for me.
To do Krishnamurti justice, though he engaged in speeches and journal-keeping rather than dabbling in sketches, he too waxed poetic on sunsets and other common subjects of art. I can only assume he tapped the same intuition that conjures these images born of my camera, my memory, and my cognition.
