Working in charcoal on a flat, white surface can be a terrifying experience for someone who works with as much texture and color as I usually do. These drawings are not studies for paintings. I started them simply as a way to challenge myself creatively, with no real sense of how they would turn out. What I discovered along the way was that what I was doing was exploring my vocabulary of forms, signs and creatures in a different way. The images in this series can be seen as the armatures, or the skeletal forms, of some of my most familiar paint figures.

The point, the line, the plane, the solid: these geometric elements become more subtle and delicate when reduced to black and white. The forms become more animated than they are in the paintings; they appear to be communicating with one another. They have scars and wounds, and they cast mysterious shadows. The process of erasing and drawing and erasing and drawing mirrors the "distressed" condition of the forms.

<< Portfolio ............ <<   Image   >> Life Form Drawings Oil and china marker on Denril (drafting film)