January Snows
At the beginning of January, I drove through light snow towards Boston. The little bits of blue sky that had been visible began disappearing as I made my way northwest through New Hampshire. The snow was coming down pretty heavily when I crossed over into Vermont. And by the time I drove past Montpelier, it was hard to see anything but white in all directions. The snowstorm engulfed my car on the twisty mountain roads.
My destination was the Vermont Studio Center, where I was to begin an artist residency, and start a brand-new series of paintings on boundaries, borders and borderlands. I had exciting ideas and planned to combine layers of transparent mono-printing with some brand-new painting methods I’d been testing. I couldn’t wait to try them out! My car was loaded down with of paints, mediums, tools of all kinds, and a range of surfaces that I’d need for my upcoming technique experiments.
When I arrived at the Red Mill building, I found a community of artists unlike any I’ve experienced before. Almost immediately, friendships with artists and writers of all kinds blossomed. They were easy, warm, supportive, encouraging, and loving.
As the days passed in that tranquil setting, with the snow falling (it snowed for at least some portion of every single day I was there!) and with the time and space to create without guardrails, something changed.
I wandered into my assigned studio anytime I wanted to. No messages to check. No chores to do. No deadlines looming. I sketched out compositions layouts for the paintings to follow, massing the dark areas and indicating other shapes. And as I worked, I began to just look at the paper. Really look. Alone in that quiet studio, I looked at the marks on the page. They seemed to talk to me. I know, I know! That sounds completely nuts, doesn’t it? But there in that studio, the whole world was just me, and the pencils, and big sheets of drawing paper.
In the end, that changed everything. No paint. No monoprints. Nothing but pencil marks on a page.
Art students are always taught that “drawing is the foundation of all art.”
But no. This was very different. These drawings weren’t the foundation of my art. They were my art.
New York Times art critic Roberta Smith once wrote: “Drawings in general are like love letters. Personal in touch and feeling, physically delicate, they reflect an artist's gifts, goals and influences in the most intimate terms… they encourage a kind of emotional liberty and desire for closeness that paintings and sculptures may not.”
She might as well have been in the room with me. These were intimate, direct expression of my perceptions and emotions.
And so, I packed the boxes and bins of art supplies back into my Subaru, and spent the rest of my studio time with nothing more than pencil, paper, eraser, and a sharpener.
A complete refresh and reset for my creative process.
Well, that was my January. How was yours?