Drawing Pretty Much in the Darkness

2 September 2008

Barbara Campbell wrote me about the recent posts concerning butterflies, ghosts et al.

Just read the ghost threads on your blog – on this evening just after I’ve finished my last experimental drawing class with my dear first years. I like to save “drawing and disappearance” for last. They like it. I start to use words like “composition” for one thing and that sounds like art. And they do a series of drawings where the room appears from around their easels and after each drawing I block out another window until after half an hour or so they’re drawing pretty much in the darkness which makes them go nice and quiet. And they’re erasing and effacing and pretty soon the ghosts start to appear from the little bits of white paper that have somehow remained untouched from all that graphite and charcoal and energy.

Relpying to B. I remembered this picture I took in Italy back in July –  my own latenight reflection in a building opposite the appartment we stayed in – 75m away I guess, a night with hardly a moon. I like that experience when your own reflection seems alien, distant. A blurred other world.

Self Portrait