Day 365 #MakeArt365

Transition State (I Saw a Bird), Mixed Media, 2015
Need to end the year with an ent of course, and a balance of hope and loss. I thank everyone who’s followed and supported these drawings, and me, over the course of this year. More of you than I could list have had a part in inspiring them. Many have done more than they know. I’m thinking a lot about both how I’ll keep at drawing without this rather rigorous discipline to steer me, and what I’ll do with this body of varied, and somewhat fraught work.  I guess we’ll all find out. Best wish for peace and kindness in the year ahead.

“We drew our arms around the bastard sons
We never would drink to the chosen ones
Well you know the way I went was not the way I planned
But I thought the world needed love and a steady hand
So I'm steady now”

-Dar Williams, If I Wrote You

Day 364 #MakeArt365

Apres moi, le deluge (Semimetric), ink, 2015

Day 363 #MakeArt365

I See Men as Trees, Walking, Ink, 2015

I return to my sometimes forgotten theme for this year of drawings with true seeing still on my mind.

Rest in peace old friend and mentor Sr. Thomasmari Gore, MSBT. I learned while making this drawing that we lost you at the end of this year of accepting loss. You'd have objected to that gender specific noun, but the other translations sound so terrible, I checked...

Day 362 #MakeArt365

Overwhelmed by the Feel of Grass, ink, 2015

A memory.

Day 361 #MakeArt365

Winding, pencil, 2015

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Cast Stone, ink, 2015

Day 359 #MakeArt365

For Unto Us, ink, 2015

Day 358 #MakeArt365

Refugees, ink, 2015

A blessed and peaceful Christmas to everyone.

Day 357 #MakeArt365

I Close My Eyes and Wish You Fine, ink, 2015

Day 356 #MakeArt365

When I'm Still Alive Underneath this Shroud, ink, 2015

Day 355 #MakeArt365

True Justified Belief, pencil, 2015

Day 354 #MakeArt365

Doodle After William Morris, acrylic, 2015

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Not Impressed, acrylic, 2015

Day 352 #MakeArt365

This Isn't Too Clear Has to Do with Triangle Inequality, ink, 2015

Day 351 #MakeArt365

 

 

There Is Always a Choice, ink, 2015

Stepping rarely from the deniability of speaking in quotes, I think that choice is sharpest when we are tempted to justify our indifference to another's suffering by blaming them for it.

 

Day 350 #MakeArt365

My Life Had Stood, ink, 2015

Day 349 #MakeArt365

Fight, ink, 2015

Day 348 #MakeArt365

Micro-evolution Observed: Only for Normal are Independent and Uncorrelated Equivalent, ink, 2015

Day 347 #MakeArt365

Pus and Light, ink, 2015

Day 346 #MakeArt365

Relic, ink, 2015

345 #MakeArt365

The Ocean, ink, 2015

"Oh, the ocean said, "What are you trying to find
I don't care, I'm not kind
I've bludgeoned your sailors
I've spat out their keepsakes
Oh, it's ashes to ashes, but always the ocean"
-Dar Williams,The Ocean

Day 344 #MakeArt365

My Fair North Star, ink, 2015

Day 343 #MakeArt365

Felt, ink, 2015

"And it felt like
A winter machine that you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound"
-Dar Williams, After All

Cedar Lane Tree Monument WIP

All the joints done on one stand element for the Cedar lane tree monument. Just 3 more and the cross braces to go... and moving a two ~500 lb pieces of wood, and building a roof... hmm.

Strangely for someone who owns all those chisels, I must admit I've never cut a mortise and tenon joint in my life before now. I imagine it must get easier with practice...

Day 342 #MakeArt365

Memory, mixed media, 2015

Cedar Lane Tree in the News

In non random drawing news: A nice piece in the Suburbanite on the installation of the Cedar Lane tree cross section in the library. Plus, it refers to me as driving a truck, though inaccurate, this somehow leaves me feeling more manly...

http://www.northjersey.com/community-news/at-the-library/historic-collection-grows-with-tree-slab-1.1466633

Day 341 #MakeArt365

Black Sun on the Water, ink, 2015

Day 340 #MakeArt365

"He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"
To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Day 339 #MakeArt365

It Occurred, ink, 2015

No, really.

"It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. ...

"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it -- what then?"

-Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Day 338 #MakeArt365

Ivan Turns His Face to the Wall, ink, 2015

Nothing like some Russian literature to cheer you up.

"And he ceased crying, but turning his face to the wall continued to ponder on the same question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But however much he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea."

-Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Day 337 #MakeArt365

Ma Ricorda, ink, 2015

Day 336 #MakeArt365

Forgive, ink, 2015

Day 335 #MakeArt365

Safety, ink, 2015

Day 334 #MakeArt365

I Will Restore to You the Years that the Locust Has Eaten, ink, 2015

Day 333 #MakeArt365

Sprout, ink, 2015

Day 332

Vine, pencil, 2015

Day 331 #MakeArt365

Growth, ink, 2015

Day 330 #MakeArt365

Passage, pencil, 2015

Day 329 #MakeArt365

Thankful Hands Raised, ink, 2015

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Memory, pencil, 2015

Day 327 #MakeArt365

The Gilded Wound, mixed media, 2015

Day 326 #MakeArt365

Demesne, pencil, 2015

Day 324 #MakeArt365

The Thing with an Excess of Feathers, ink, 2015

Day 325 #MakeArt365

Stranger, pencil, 2015

Day 323 #MakeArt365

Night Vision, acrylic, 2015

Day 322 #MakeArt365

Into The Woods, mixed media, 2015

Day 321 #MakeArt365

Waiting for Peace, pencil, 2015

Day 320 #MakeArt365

Choice, mixed media, 2015

Day 319 #MakeArt365

Self Portrait as Fool, acrylic, 2015

Day 318 #MakeArt365

Night Flower, ink, 2015