Untitled 7 Gouache, acrylic, charcoal, cut and pasted paper 38 x 29″ 2015

This is a work on paper, though generally I call it a drawing. I started working on it in August when I was at the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My sister and brother-in-law have a house there overlooking a glassy smooth inlet near Chesapeake Bay. I worked outdoors or on the screened-in porch. That was fortunate because the air was thick with mosquitoes which I tried unsuccessfully to bat away. There were also cardinals stopping at a nearby feeder. Their sound is more like a “chip chip” rather than a “chirp chirp”. It was a soothing sound. I preferred it to my iPod.

Why work on a drawing, a not very big one at that, for almost three months? It’s just one of the questions I’ve been asking myself. Or why write about a drawing and then publish my thoughts, basically making a private affair public? It’s not as if there aren’t any warnings about writing, many from other painters. Matisse, after giving voice to some of those misgivings said, in “Notes of a Painter,”: “Personally, I shall simply try to state my feelings and aspirations as a painter without worrying about the writing.” That sounds like a good place to begin.