Everything is worthy of being drawn; anything can inspire a painting.
I spend as much time as I can walking and sitting and drawing in the woods near my home. Drawing is my way of getting to know the life of a place that is special to me.
Yet I always come back to drawing and painting people– faces and bodies. There is so much to say about why that is, more than I have words for. But the ancient Greeks knew something when they said, “The soul, to know itself, must gaze into a soul.” And Wendell Berry, “The task of healing is to respect oneself as a creature, no more and no less.”
I often ask myself if I can justify spending my time making pictures. There is so much work to be done in the world! But I tell myself that it is important, first, to try to see, clearly and honestly, with humility and patience. Drawing and painting, I hope, are a way for me to learn to see. It’s a beginning.
How difficult I find it to get out of my own way, simply to look and to listen, and then to respond. How difficult, sometimes, to trust my response and to follow it. But moments arise in which I do, and it is so simple, so natural. Everything is different then. Good things happen then.
