Above: Two of the panels built by Tara Lynne; these feature lovely old hardwood panels from drawer-bottoms of a neglected dresser, with reinforced balsa wood cradles.
The moon and i are in growth phases.
More. And More specific.
Some things have taken root. I looked back in time –the space of a year. And saw last February found me still flailing, not connecting with anything. But then in March I began the pencil drawings– taking inspiration from my goodly collection of old photos. Which, in truth I suppose began a bit earlier in the sketchbook; the quick pen drawings I was doing. But the pencils took it to a more intense place, and got me into a dead technical groove which I’m still pursuing (and which was, in hindsight, really the only place I could have begun in earnest.)
In recent weeks I’ve completed two of the long planned-upon graphite & oil on wood panels, and have a number of new panels and frames with which to work. This evening I dragged home a large, warped piece of 1/4” maple (I think) plywood from the street, which I intend to trim out into pieces to fit some of the beautiful old frames I have kicking around.
On the Etching & Intaglio front, I’m making fast progress, feeling both comfortable and thrilled with the medium (as anyone’s been reading this blog knows already). I have now two plates ready to take on aquatint (Well, one of them I just scribed this weekend, so will need first to bathe it in acid). Scenery –buildings and trees– come to life wonderfully in this medium, brick by brick, twig by branch. Still working on slowing down though, a necessity where every last wee line resolves so clearly, unlike in the drypoints.
I feel intrigued and passionate about the direction things are moving, and also excited about what else will unfold in this flurry of intensity. As I told Ben of my experience in working the plate all day Friday, ‘You know when my hands hurt and I desperately need a shower, and I still won’t stop working, that something great is happening.’ Here is a medium to which I feel I can become addicted. It is the great amount of process and planning that appeals to me, speaks to the graphic skills that have become like breathing to me over the past two decades .
Next phase with both panels and the plates is to not merely edit, stylize, but to bring greater transformation to the images I work from; I intend to keep the realistic, convincing quality that comes of working from photographic materials, but to inject otherness; to warp the sensibilities and introduce unforeseen threads. I wish to impart upon them aspects of my most revered dream-memory places– those places I love and/or fear the most.
This is how things are moving.
e daggar art: THE MUSEUM 