US Highway 50 and a Drawing of Ottawa, Kansas

Street Corner, Ottawa, Kansas, US Highway 50
burnt matchstick and charcoal
9 11/16 x 17 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

 

 

Ottawa, Kansas is the first image to come from a recent trip across the country on US Highway 50. The drawing was made using the tips of burnt matchsticks and charcoal. The carbon closest to the unburnt section of the matchstick is a wonderfully unstable color of brown.

 

I never drew much as child because I was painting.  I thought drawing was an incomplete process and saw no reason to pursue it. When I discovered charcoal in college, I realized that the medium was more painterly than paint could ever hope to be.  A broad wash was as simple as pushing dust with a sponge across paper, and the rub of an eraser made an impact that a single brush stroke seldom achieved.  I worked almost exclusively in charcoal for a while in college and repeated that process for a couple years after graduation.  Because painting had been my background, I treated charcoal as paint. Charcoal consumed the vacancy of paper.  It filled the page.  It was no place for a vignette.  I never saw drawing as an exercise, or a study for something else.  Although I see the value of exercise, I’ve never been able to do it.  I am either fully engaged, or I don’t want to have anything to do with the process and would rather go walking.  

The Diorama and a Move to a New Curved Surface

acrylic on a shaped ragboard panel

 

I recently started painting on a curved surface that leans forward. That physically places the sky in front of the foreground. Although the positioning is the opposite of the dioramas I made for many years, the sense of space it creates is about the same.

 

The diorama changed the way I saw painting. Once the element of space was included, I realized composition no longer mattered. There was no reason to worry about how things related to the edge of canvas or paper, because conceptually, I eliminated the picture plane. I was painting space. I was painting the world around me, and the world already happened to be composed. This related to that simply by the fact that it was there.

 

mixed media diorama

 

 

Although I loved what the diorama did, the problem of shadow and glass always bothered me. In 2002 I stopped making the diorama. There was a lot of looking over my shoulder at the past that initially got in the way of painting. I lacked the confidence I had. Even though painting had always been my strong point, it was now something I feared. The diorama had become my calling card and I did not know how to function without it. The problem with specialization is that you become a craftsman, a person that no longer has anything new to say, and art thrives in a life of the unknown.

 

The curved surface I am painting on is not something I consciously struggled to discover. I simply woke in the middle of the night with the idea. Although it looks like a straight line from the diorama to the curved surface, the fact is I never would have thought of it as long as I was making the diorama. If what you have is seen as a solution, the only thing you will ever be able to do is refine the problem. It is difficult to think outside the box without actually leaving it.