Thoughts on Drawing

Drawings fascinate us because the artist’s experience and the viewer’s are closer than in any other medium. A drawing is relatively small, a closed world. It can be a big world once you are in it, but the viewer can be alone in the drawing, as the artist is. It is possible to see a drawing in relation to the wall, the size of the room, other drawings - but you can just see in to it, just let that be the whole world for a while.

I like the freedom to get an idea completed fast, in a few sessions. I work in spurts. There is no program. I may work on a group of drawings for many days—but then I might not do drawing again for months.

And I like the freedom of control, the fact that it is my own hand all the way, with no other hand touching it.

Also I feel very liberated about the colors I use and their relation to each other.

I can get a tremendous sense of volume in a drawing, a kind of material space.

I start with the site, the page. I have a basic idea about one or two forms I want to make, but then the drawing tells me what I want to do next. And it just leads me on and on. It takes over. I may have a sense that I want this drawing to be very spare or that one to be very active, but I never plan it out beforehand. Number one, there would be no discovery - I like the adventure of figuring it out as I go along. My mind and my hand don’t know at the beginning what they are going to do, and yet we wind up with an “answer” that is mentally and visually very interesting to me.