The Impossibility of Nature / "... the Dog of Art turns to the world the quietness of his eyes." / Briefly Losing My Blog / Learning to ask for help appropriately

With gratitude to a friend who is an artist and who introduced me to the work of Shona Wilson this week.

With gratitude to Denise Levertov for:

The Dog of Art

That dog with daisies for eyes
who flashes forth
flame of his very self at every bark
is the Dog of Art.
Worked in wool, his blind eyes
look inward to caverns and jewels
which they see perfectly,
and his voice
measures forth the treasure
in music sharp and loud,
sharp and bright,
bright flaming barks,
and growling smoky soft, the Dog
of Art turns to the world
the quietness of his eyes.

(Late in the day yesterday, my blog disappeared.   My immediate reaction involved a sense of doom (!) followed by disbelief (trying this and that to get it back), followed by becoming philosophical ("Oh well, I'll just start another one.  So it goes.").  It was too late in the day for me to attempt anything strenuous.  I just let it be.

This morning when I woke up at 4 a.m., rested and renewed, I felt curious about my missing blog and as a result, I contacted Blogger for help through its chat format.  A man named James immediately figured out what had gone wrong and walked me through the process of unlocking my blog.  The problem had to do with having obtained a domain under an email address that was "unverified."  Although I bought the domain a week or so ago, there was no problem until yesterday.  By following the instructions given by James and changing the email address on my domain to one that is verified, I was able to unlock my blog.  You can imagine my relief and gratitude to James.

It has taken much of my life to learn to ask for help appropriately when things go wrong and to trust those I ask for help.  As I child I learned not to ask for help because I learned not to trust those whom I had once believed could help me.  I am eternally grateful for what I have learned from my experiences and the experiences of others in the practice of asking for help when help is needed.) 

Art That I Can Hear

From the Friends of Silence newsletter for July and August of 2015:

Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things, it is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of awareness of the spirit.

~ Ansel Adams in a letter to Cedric Wright, 1937, as quoted in ART AS A WAY OF LIFE, ed. by Roderick MacIver

Turning Point in Early June 2015

Yesterday I was out on my porch with my camera. Turning around, I noticed my reflection in the window. Interesting to discover when I downloaded the photo that through my silhouette I can see photos of mother's mother and father, my mother, my father's mother and father, and my father, as well as my two sisters, my only nephew's father, and my nephew and his girlfriend and their now 1-year-old son, Pablo. Over my heart is the light I draw and paint by at my work table. If you look closely, you will see the carved red cardinal who perches on the light. The book is The Songs of Bob Dylan: 1966-1975 on a wooden music holder.  In front of that is one of the caned chairs that my mother's parents bought when they were first married in Boston in the early 1900s.  What appear to be white polka dots on dark blue is the pattern on my couch. On the couch is a colorful pillow with Fair Isle patterns knitted by my Scottish / German mother years ago. Sweet to see that my old dulcimer, made in Santa Cruz, California, in the 1970s, appears to be out on the porch with me, along with everything else, including the red Salvia plant that I bought and put in a planter in my porch garden this past week and the lush cattail pond, nearby dark hills, and lovely grey sky.

Life Drawing #6 (1982-1983?)

This is the last of a selection from a series of life drawings done with pencil. For several years in the 1980s, until I took a job in a hospital as a medical transcriptionist on the evening shift, I spent every Tuesday evening doing life drawing in an informal life drawing group at Western Washington University. That was when I was in my early 30s, and it would still be several years before the beginning of my freedom from an eating disorder. Although this was a dark time in my life on many levels, when I was doing life drawing I was at least able to see and try to convey the light in other people.

Life Drawing #5 (1982-1983?)

During the informal life drawing sessions at Western Washington University, the person who was being the model would take three half-hour poses. One night I was able to fit all three poses into one drawing that still amazes me. When I pause in my writing, I can look to the east and see the waning crescent moon over the Cascade foothills. The remaining areas of open water in the cattail marsh are so still that they are reflecting the grey clouds in the predawn sky.

Life Drawing #4 (1982-1983?)

Just realized that these life drawings were not done on a newsprint drawing pad as I had stated earlier. They were done on a slightly higher quality white drawing paper pad. Because it has been a long time since I have drawn or painted from life rather than memory and dreams, and I thought maybe it was time to start drawing from life again, even if only to draw my cat, I bought a book called HOW TO DRAW ANYTHING: A COMPLETE GUIDE, by Angela Gair. 

On page 20 of that book, she says: "If you are not sure of the height of, say, a tree in the distance compared with a tree in the foreground, you can check using the "measure-and-compare" method. Use the foreground tree as your "key measure," comparing all parts of the subject to that. Hold your pencil at arm's length, elbow locked, in front of the tree. Keeping one eye closed, line up the tip of the pencil with the top of the tree and mark the position of the base of the trunk with your thumbnail. This is your key measure. Now, keeping your thumbnail in position and your arm outstretched, move the pencil to that distant tree and compare its height with the length of your key measure. You can compare the length of your key measure with other parts of the landscape, too, for measuring widths as well as heights." 

This technique is what Tom Sherwood taught us in his life drawing classes and what I found most useful in being able to draw people from life. 

 On the wall near my computer is a large postcard titled "How to Draw Geometric Shapes." It shows, in four steps, how to look at a small dog who is sitting down, a parrot's head and a horse's head in order to draw two triangles, a circle and a rectangle. As a child trying to learn to draw from art instruction books, I never made much progress using that technique of reducing the shapes and structures of animals to geometric shapes in order to build them back up into a completed drawing, and that postcard has been on my wall for years because it still makes me smile. As I was looking at the above drawing again, I remembered that the way I did life drawings was to start somewhere in the person's face, usually the eyes. I would make a beginning mark and then from there begin the measuring process. I didn't sketch in the whole person, as is usually advised, and I certainly didn't reduce the person to geometric shapes, but slowly developed a drawing that I was pleased with. The process was deeply meditative.

Life Drawing #3 (1982-1983?)

The human body is sacred and is so vulnerable. This young man is sitting on a drawing bench that had been placed on the model's platform. Behind him on the wall was a blackboard on which was written "40%." If I had had time to draw everything I saw, he would have been surrounded by people sitting at drawing benches, deep in concentration. In a life drawing class, everyone sees from a unique perspective and has a unique way of drawing. It is fascinating to walk around the room and see how many ways a person can be seen and translated onto paper.

Life Drawing #2 (1982-1983?)

As my confidence in my ability to draw grew, I began to draw two poses on one piece of paper, and so it looked as if I had drawn a pair of twins posing or maybe a "time-lapse" image.