Circumstantial Evidence

03-02-12
colored pencil
© 2012 Rob Dunlavey

It's been a lackluster winter. Spring is officially a few weeks away and the birds are tuning up for the Concert de Printemps. We've had maybe, three snow "events". I don't think the word "storm" really applies here. But, last winter, I was out in all weather merrily sketching away. This winter, all I want to do is lurk in the greenhouses and draw plants.

All things have their season I guess. All enthusiasms have their predictable arcs: discovery, newness, imperative and  eventual ennui. And then it's time to be alert to new experiences and things that just feel right to do and follow. The creative life is full of these transitions. Maybe the result will be a renewed purpose and vigor for the old disciplines. Maybe it's a time to get back to some long neglected idea. Or maybe a new approach will engender something new altogether. I only know if I'm in it when I'm actually in it and the shore is receding and the boat is slapping the oncoming waves and the wind blows back my hair.

Tangent to this basic train of thought, I need to tell you about an excellent book I just finished: "Dante in Love" by A.N. Wilson (review by Tom Payne in The Telegraph). How does it relate to a drawing of a few cacti? If we are lucky, our creative lives are long and they will reflect and be evidence of where and how we have been, what we've been up to and what seemed to matter to us. And this means that our lives will be full of contradictions, things said in sharp clarion contrast and other moments of obfuscation and cluelessness. But my life, if lived well, however long or short, will include evidence of an engaged life like Dante's perhaps. How could it be otherwise?

It may be apocryphal, but Thoreau, on his deathbed was asked if he had "ended his quarrel with God". To this the philosopher answered that there had never been a quarrel at all. So be it!

Goldfish

These fish live in a pool in the Wellesley College greenhouses which I visited yesterday morning.

It's had to draw the constantly swimming creatures.

I would draw a basic shape and return to it when the fish returned

This deep red fish breaks the water's surface

eeeee!

The Silk Mill Dam

A view of the Charles River and the mill buildings at Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts.
Feb. 4, 2012

The Silk Mill Dam in Newton Upper Falls is a two-tiered affair with the water cascading over the initial edge and then off of a shelf below. You can see the side channel (is this what is called a millrace?) to the left of the main flow.

Below this dam, the Charles River enters Hemlock Gorge with its steep banks and stately hemlock trees (this is a public reservation with parking available for hikers and picnickers). A beautiful stone bridge, called "Echo Bridge" soars over the intimate gorge. The sensitive acoustics under the arching span are quite remarkable. It would be interesting to sing or play a musical instrument underneath it. Maybe on Halloween night or when it's foggy…!

Click here for a map.

Echo Bridge (photo by Doug Cornelius)

The Cruelest Month

"A dead frozen swan, Lake Waban"
graphite
02-07-12

By this time of Winter, when Spring seems just around the corner, life in the world beyond our front doors is getting desperate. Forage is scarce and delivers less energy for the amount of work expended to get it. The bodily reserves (fat) of most animals is nearly depleted. A huge expenditure of energy is looming too: Spring mating. This swan had gradually separated itself from the larger group that calls Lake Waban home. For several weeks it lackadaisically foraged in a quiet corner of the lake, a nook that freezes over before the rest of the lake. After a week or so of this behavior, it died and lay frozen on the ice near the shore.

It was odd to see the solitary swan poking around in the roots and muck along the edge. It looked so serene dabbling in the dark, cold water. But it didn't look well. As I drew this posthumous portrait this morning, a man struck up a conversation and said that he had seen this swan two days ago. The water was frozen and the swan rested on the ice with its head down. He clapped his hands and it raised its head but didn't really move. Was it sick, old …lovelorn?

I imagine the body will winter here, frozen in place until the lake can reclaim one of its most majestic residents.

a small log tossed on the ice to see how strong it was

The dead swan

detail

Good Light

Sunlit greenhouse
02-05-12
pencil

Winter is just the best time of year to spend in a greenhouse or conservatory. And the best time of day to be in a greenhouse in the winter is late afternoon when the light streams in through the frosted windows. The light just billows in and reflects everywhere and comes out in little glowing patches. It all seems alive in a kind of passive way. Very solar. And then the sun begins to decline and the magic drains away. Bye. Time to get serious and button up.

I had about thirty minutes to make this sketch yesterday.

Hero or Villain?

A woody stump growing out of a stone wall
01-22-12
colored pencil

What's this: a symbol of tenacious Life cornering and exploiting a mostly-forgotten niche in which to thrive and thumb its nose at the gardener? Or is it a cancer, pell-mell egotistically and slowly killing its host and destroying the wall built by the patient stonemason?

I do not know!

Getting Out!

Reflections above the South Natick Dam
colored pencil | 20 Jan, 2012

We got a little snow last night and somehow I managed to fritter away most of the day inside. I finally yanked myself out and down to the dam for a little respite from the zombie-like state of flitting between computer and social networking chores. You know the feeling I'm sure.

But down here (it's just a ten minute walk from home) there is this wonderful white noise and a breeze and clear blue skies and the very persistent fiery orb in the sky. Hello Sun! Perhaps you know how long this river has been flowing here. It hasn't always had a dam across I know but I do wonder if other creatures worship it as I do. I have traded my silicone glitter for the flash of your prehistoric light off of the moving water.

As I write now, the day has once again been put to bed and the snow glows a dark molten blue. It will smolder all night under the distracted eyes of Orion and other hunters. It's a big world!

Two Swans

Two Swans, Charles River, South Natick, Massachusetts
crayon, watercolor
13 Jan. 2012

Do plants sleep?

Ficus lyrata
pencil
11 Jan 2012

I made this picture of a fig tree yesterday at the Wellesley College Greenhouses. They're open from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. almost every day of the year.

I'm reading an interesting book: "On The Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction" by Brian Boyd, Belknap Press (Harvard) 2009. I've just started it so I'm only in the "evolution and cognition" part of the introductory chapters. But it has gotten me thinking of the requirements of life and different evolutionary strategies of different life forms.
Since plants adapt to the environment in a very different way than animals, is there any possibility of a "fiction of trees" or "poetry of roots and fronds?" What we think of as "creative play" is mostly our overpowered brains "desperately" seeking patterns in a chaotic flow of information that streams through our senses. If a tree hasn't needed to quickly adapt its moment-by-moment behavior to predators for example, it might not have all this pattern-seeking software in its neurons (okay, I don't think plants have neurons in the same way animals do) and hence it doesn't leapfrog whatever patterns it has adapted to and create meaning or predictions. It just IS. And that's pretty OK if you're a plant.

I like the idea that fiction and Art as behaviors are part of Nature and can be explained as adaptations to selection pressures in Nature. They are an evolutionary byproduct of our particular biology interacting in our particular social way of existence. This view reinforces the necessity and inherent pleasure of Art-making as a deep behavior that explains the presence for Art of all forms across the span of human culture.

On Thin Ice

Juvenile swan, Lake Waban
5 January 2012
colored pencil

I really wondered about this immature swan I saw last week as I walked around Lake Waban at Wellesley College. The southern end of the lake had a thin layer of ice. Swans, coots, mallards and mergansers floated and dabbled in other ice-free corners of the lake. But this swan was stuck out on the ice for some reason and had to walk to open water. He broke through here and there. He slipped this way and that. When he became tired he would settle himself down and waggle his tail to settle his plumage. A few times he gazed at the ice as if to see something underneath. Why was the water hard and cold?

Eventually, he reached the thin edge of the ice and entered the water with a small splash. And everything was fine. No swans rushed over to see if he was alright. The coots continued their antic bobbing and diving. The mallards gossiped and minded their own business. And the mergansers, four females and a showy male, quickly disappeared as mergansers do.

Years ago when my youngest daughter was very little, she put a pea in her nose. Our various attempts to extract it only made it go in deeper and higher. Finally, somewhat embarrassed, we all trooped into the doctor's office and with a chuckle, he removed the pea with a special tool he'd made out of a small piece of wire. As he examined the pea and settled my daughter down from the traumatic experience he paused and said to one and all (and no one in particular) that people had been sticking things in their noses (and other places) since the dawn of time. The pea would eventually shrivel or rot and humanity would survive and maybe learn that peas are better put in one's mouth.

Maybe next winter, there won't be a swan wishing he had a pair of ice skates… I did see a fox once out on the ice once though…

That Blue Pencil

The South Natick Dam
01-02-2012
colored pencil

A few years ago, I took part in a focus group to evaluate colored pencils. I received a set of anonymous pencils and got down to work. They were all different colors varied greatly in quality. I got to keep the pencils but it did take a lot of time to answer the tedious online questionnaires. This drawing is done with a hard, chalky blue pencil. I wouldn't recommend it to any serious professional.

I like my art supplies to have personality …or, I like to assume that they have personality. Any type of personality is okay. This particular pencil is hard and alternately waxy & chalky, and a gritty light blue color. Draw just normally and it barely deposits material on the paper. Bear down and you might just burnish the paper or it might lay down a skid mark of this blue color. It makes my shading and line unpredictable --which I like.

When I buy paper, I try to buy a bunch, stash it away and forget that I have it. I gobble up paints and inks that are on sale and past their "sell date". I love picking up stuff at yard sales that have unknown provenience. The paint might need to be resuscitated. Will the paper fade and yellow? Is it unprofessional to make art out of materials that are so untrustworthy? Maybe, in this internet age where artwork is scanned and archived as soon as it is painted, using scurrilous materials is sort of excusable. This "fast living" helps me make a lot of pictures and keeps me fresh and, I think, vital. My materials give me ideas and energy as they express their own irascible quirks. If I could have anything, I'd probably have a lot of expensive pigments and paper AND a lot of junky stuff too.

If you've read this far, it doesn't get any better. This question is a quandary for me.