Grace Notes
June 19, 2009 by Janice · 5 Comments
“The only kind of grace you can have is the grace you can imagine.”~ Ben Zander
I am borrowing from Ben Zander again today. I think because I spent a large portion of yesterday going through materials and working through those project sheets I mentioned on Monday. That meant processing ideas and maybes, into the next steps in different media. Cutting canvas to size, pre-washing raw silks, sorting through collage odds and ends, considering papers to use for the next drawings and assemblages. And pulling out some pre-painting sketches. Some photographs. The kind of work that leads up to the performance part of a finished piece.
But in all of that, I keep going back to drawing. I seem to have an unquenchable desire to draw right now. To feel ink or pencil pulled across paper. To make marks and more marks. To feel them as they glide, or scoot or scumble into form.
I love to draw.
And I want to make some things that are not only close to my heart and the genesis of this series, but create a new offering for my collectors. Some intimate pieces that are dear to me, but not so dear in price as the full opera of the large works.
And yes I did a third of the base drawings for the postcards yesterday too. And I loved that. I even love sharpening my pencils. Cutting or tearing paper to size. Clipping notes to this project origin or that one. And I rediscovered some good ones yesterday, some ones to do in a different way. Ideas that tumbled into being another step closer to an ooh and ahh painting. Large ones from an earlier plan, but with a difference now. I’ll do some studies there.
I love this kind of work too. It’s that place where pencil gives structure, pen makes notes, and the possibilities take on shape and direction. Where I imagine and in some cases envision the pieces fully done.
And I am excited.
There’s this feeling that comes at this point. It’s very hard to put into words, but it is a kind of itchiness, an edgy tension, anticipation, eagerness. And a solidness too. And then there’s the smile part. The part that comes from finding a sweet spot that I’ll nudge into being. And that I truly love. It feels like order, but order that just sets context for play. There’s this bump in my pulse, a pick up in my heart rate, when I see what can come from scooting that pencil and pen across that paper.
So yesterday, yesterday was full of hard work, and dreaming, and doing one thing and then the next and then another. Yes, just being creative. Imagining the grace of the next few pieces.
Now all I have to do is do them.
That’s how it is in Private Studio.
And it is Friday. See you for Naughty Margaritas later? I have some drawing to do and I am fairly wriggly with joy to do it.
How about you? Been a good week?