Here are some images from a new series I'm working on called "What does your Soul look like?"
Usually my work is really thought through before I lay pen to paper or brush to canvas. Most times I see the image very clearly in my mind before I even begin, and for me "making art" can primarily boil down to an effort to move the image from my mind's eye into the material realm. (Which I am pretty good at. If I do say so myself.) This can be a simultaneously satisfying and frustrating experience. Satisfying because this ability has served me well over the years in both commission work and in my own. It saves time, money, and space to work through the possibilities of a piece mentally and be prepared with a final product before I even begin. However. The absolute spiritual nature of art lies in the exploration and discovery found in the process itself.
Usually my work is really thought through before I lay pen to paper or brush to canvas. Most times I see the image very clearly in my mind before I even begin, and for me "making art" can primarily boil down to an effort to move the image from my mind's eye into the material realm. (Which I am pretty good at. If I do say so myself.) This can be a simultaneously satisfying and frustrating experience. Satisfying because this ability has served me well over the years in both commission work and in my own. It saves time, money, and space to work through the possibilities of a piece mentally and be prepared with a final product before I even begin. However. The absolute spiritual nature of art lies in the exploration and discovery found in the process itself.
That being said, I love to doodle. I love getting lost in a drawing, making that first mark and having no idea where it will lead. One of my favorite things I've ever drawn was in pencil on a desk in my college math class. I spent the entire two and a half hours working on that drawing, which emerged as a Buddha sitting on a tatami mat floating in space, surrounded by stars and flowers. When I went to that class a day later the drawing was gone, the desk wiped clean. Which is fine :) I find impermanence and ephemerality to be beautiful. See: ikebana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikebana
Often my doodles form faces. Often they are worried, or lined in some way. Concerned, or sad. Sometimes not. They begin in my emotions, I suppose, then become something of their own, something that feels like it doesn't really belong to me. So here's what is happening here:
Before leaving for a long road trip with a group of friends, I picked up an "activity" book by Taro Gomi I found in the children's section of a store. http://www.chroniclebooks.com/tarogomi
Filling in the empty spaces of his simple outlines was very satisfying.
