Good Morning Jack

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 14 September

Good Morning Jack...

gordoMars

I tire of words eventually.  I’m no poet.  Words for me are but a tool of reason.  They pass along straightforward information.  There’s little nuance and definitely no frills here.

Don

There was a time when I was comfortable with creating images.  I discovered I didn't have to be an artist – I didn't have to be good – to express something of what I felt.  It all offered no explanation.  I liked the mystery involved.

Diane

One’s own mind offers room to wander.  We find places we never thought to go.  I like it best when I don’t let thinking get in my way.  I’m not interesting when I try to be smart.

Daphne

Is this how she truly looked?  Don’t be silly.  This is how she felt.  Actually this is how I felt about her as she sat across the table from me… making up stories; creating altogether new words to describe her thoughts.

muse

It’s an image of a particular thought.  It’s like a hieroglyph.  Something captures one’s attention.  Something all too familiar is suddenly seen as though for the first time.  New ideas come to life.  New associations are made.  It only happens when we disentangle ourselves from our humdrum inner narrative:  yada, yada, yada.

no remedy

She was in a park.  I don’t know what was going on.  Does it matter?  Isn’t the face a marvelous device?  Our face provides a wealth of visual clues.  What complex creatures we are.  Think of all the means we use to express who it is we are.  Besides the face there is body language, words, voice, touch – and art of all kinds.  Dogs have tails, barks and whines.  Maybe porpoises use mental telepathy.  It doesn't make for Shakespeare. 

Gipper

You can get lost in a face.  Age enriches one’s image with extraordinary topography.  Countless frowns, smiles, laughs and arched eyebrows leave their mark.  There’s history here.  All these telling nooks and crannies.  Wrinkles are magnificent; even sexy.

curtain up

Explanations can be tiresome.  Intrigue provides a fertile field to explore.  If you insist on talk, try substituting this desire with music – minus the need of lyrics.    

sax

What is more personal than living in the moment?  It is its own reward.  We’re fully grown but we have all the observational powers of a three year old.  Here’s how we truly get away from it all.  Enjoy your day. 

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jacob

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 29 June

Dogpatch

Good Morning Jacob…

Drawing was never any good for me unless I was not my usual self.  I could never think my way through anything I did.  What I wanted to do was readily available for me to see or feel beforehand or it was never there at all.  It had to all be made up.  I haven’t the skill or patience to work from life, to attempt to portray what I see in front of me.  It’s about basic shapes and colors and maybe some music to help stir the pot within.  Things are sort of spilled on the paper.  There are plenty of mistakes.  Nothing I do is ever really finished.  So long as a drawing is within reach it is susceptible to change.  Sometimes they improve.  Other times I disaster them.  It can be depressing.  Occasionally, I try to undisaster them.  It’s been known to work but most of the time the result just further sinks beneath its awkward ways.  There are so many false starts.  I’ve created a field of debris.  How good it feels when I’m happy with something I’ve done.  Those moments are few.  It’s like capturing a lightening bug in November when there aren’t supposed to be any lightening bugs flying about.  Darkness settles in but a small light burns off and on within my jar.

Basic colors have rewards.  They each appear to have a distinct personality.  One finding of interest to me is that a particular color may reveal a certain personality in one setting and then show a surprising different turn of character when placed in a wholly separate context.  Let’s take a color of blue; one we might associate with a summer sky over the tumbling of surf upon sand.  How this blue feels depends upon the company it keeps.  Coupled with a sedate yellow I might find this blue giving me the scent of honeysuckle while on a first date.  Were the same blue to cozy up against a brooding red then my pleasant blue becomes more willful.  The light joy of walking hand in hand with faded ochre has now become more of an impassioned embrace.  It’s serious business between these two, red and blue. 

I rarely listen to the words of a song.  Images in my drawings often don’t count for much. They can merely be a starting point.  A wheel is an approximation of a circle.  A building is little more than a box.  A path is a meandering line.  They provide my excuse to record the path my mind plots through the movement of my hand.  The forms must have meaning but I know not what.  Should it matter to me?  I think not.  If you view a dance from some distance the impression left is that of the group.  It’s the play of men and women together.  Together they are the vessel that holds the charm.  Ideally the various items in my drawing best serve the interest of making something whole.  Have they come to dance?  Can I see the music?  A false note is like stubbing my toe.  The melody is lost to the pain of stumbling over today’s misguided debris.  What a colossal waste of time it has all been.  What conceit.  Trash. 

Still, later in the day I can hope.  Tomorrow may be better.

Love,

          Dad