Artist Statement

Artist Statement:
No matter what I am doing or where I am, I am always an observer. I am so compelled by details that I often lose sight of the big picture, which, based on my experience, is generally seen as the main focus in everyday situations. My sketches reflect my personal fascination with the little particulars in my world. My sketchbook is a way of understanding my attraction to them and visually expressing what I experience as their meaningfulness and beauty, whether the subject be a plastic bag hanging on a door knob, a leaf or someone's foot. Within the pages of my sketchbook, the details in my world lose that sense of feeling arbitrary or unimportant. Suddenly they matter. I am fascinated by the idea of selecting items that are often assumed to be mundane and worthy of little contemplation. When I give them the spiritual attention they deserve through the act of sketching, I feel as though the universe is more in balance.

My idea of sketchbook is to capture places and people in action. I like to sketch places like farmers market, farm, railway station, airport, sports event etc. Drawing something in sketchbook makes it seem so lively to me as compared to photographing it. It also leaves beautiful memory of place, person or action.

Sometimes I love to sketch part of my kitchen, bedroom or any room, pots and pans, kid’s toys, bike, plants on the windowsill etc.

I like sketching spontaneously in pen or pencil but sometimes I love to do quick watercolor sketching or add pencil color to my sketch. I am also thinking of adding collage work and words to my sketchbook.

If I am traveling to some country I would love to draw things that reflect their culture like, their dresses, food, music, and art.

I liked the angle at which bike was standing.




I cut this papaya last weekend and was so facinated by its color and freshness and felt like sketching it right away.




I love to sketch kids shoes.





My daughter watching something.

Marie's view of her world, Spring of 09

This is another drawing from the first lines to the finished piece with waterbased pencils...all black.

This is the route my drawing of this "pile" has taken.

These are my fish at 5, 10 and 20 minutes...three of my favorite drawings from the semester. I love my fish!!!

this is my cat. , Chief.

This tree is outside my sister's house in Florida. I drew it while we were discussing funeral arrangements for my mother. It was very soothing to be sketching nature.

Over the years certain themes have resonated with me. I knew that I had a praoclivity towards my animals. While i Florida, I found myself drawn to the palm trees. I always liked monolithic objects composed of many parts so the overlapping of the leaves and textures of the trucks appealed to me. My favorites are the palms moving in the breeze.

Another new theme was the idea oflayering and piling. I foundit challenging to observe a group of objects of different textures and shapes.' as well as the sense of them taking off into space.

For christmas I received a small sketchbook that has been easy to carry around and find that I am more apt to take it out and do a sketch.

On the whole I use my sketchbook for observational drawings. I don't tand to doodle abstractly but like to observe the world around me. I also really liked reworking old drawings. I have been inspired by other class members who look at the world differently using more text and color than myself.

I don't like to draw when I am tired...I do not enjoy it and it does not relax me. I need the enrgy to care about what I am doing so i sketch moreon the weekend mornings. However I do find that I can do quick sketches more often since I am more aware of having my sketchbook with me.

I mentioned that I went to an open studio in Concord and met a lady named Max who altered old books and turned them into intimate artist books. They don't have many sketches, but I think they are very intriguing for someone who keeps a sketchbook. I was inspired by her unusual materials, variety of textures, and ephemera. I hope you enjoy these photos I took while exploring her books....

this is TOM JUDD's Everyday, he has been doing something in his journal everyday for several years ... Personally i find the chaos really dynamic and inspiring . 

john copeland

this is JOhn Copeland, not the sketchbook-keeper i was talking about last class, but definitely similar and very interesting. He is a painter and teacher at Pratt(?i think... maybe Parsons...or SVA) but is or became famous because of his sketch books which are in the "books" section of his website.  A lot of them aren't displaying on my computer, but there are a few still showing that give you a little taste of his style, I think I have definitely been influenced by him. enjoy!

On another note (& to make up for lost time)...

Here are some first steps to new project ideas using the imagery and little things that grab me...or that i grab off the street...

I realize these aren't sketches, but they are what inspire me and have collected in my pockets and sketchbooks too... so here's a little peek into my brain and its ephemera

visual stimulus

here are some visual things that i decided to see mainly as patterns (a perspective i'm very drawn to) I am pretty sure that i want to work with these, maybe in a more abstract way, maybe in some form of printmaking, but I definitely plan on drawing from them.  I think the close up framing makes them seem kind of overwhelming...which i like. 

  

I know this isn't entirely sketchbook-related, but I thought I'd share my charcoal drawing for an album cover I just did for a friend's musical group in NYC last weekend because I'm really excited about it. It also did start of as a bunch of sketches on top of one another. The image will undergo some editing in Adobe Photoshop to smooth out the tiny white dots that resulted from the highly textured paper I used. No more textured paper for album covers. That was a silly idea.

by the pool

it's more fun when you really have some time to draw. Here is my sketch from florida.

Boston Public Library Sketchbooks

This morning was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with Karen Shafts, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Boston Public Library. Karen was kind enough to share with me a nice selection of sketchbooks by such artists as Edmund Whitefield, Robert McClusky (author of the notable children's book Make Way for Ducklings), Peter Scott (Professor in the Print and Paper Area of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts), Hiram Merrill and Toulouse Lautrec. Plus a "mystery" sketchbook acquired from Gallery Naga some years ago. It was great to see how these artists used their sketchbooks as diaries, notebooks, daily routine journals, travel logs and study logs. McClusky's sketchbook (well, more like a sketchpad) was full of ducks ducks ducks! Preening, waddling, sleeping, eating... Whitefield included dates and times of meetings, train schedules, etc. Merrill included pressed and dried leaves and flowers for later use in watercolor paintings.

As this is a public collection, anyone can make an appointment to see these things in the BPL collection.

my favorite sketch-practice

< This was my old sketchbook cover.

I like to collage a lot, so I experimented with a kind of drawing collage.. I was on a road trip from California to Boston over several months with tons of down time, so my rules for this practice were to find something interesting (if not many things) in every place I happened to be in and integrate them all together. here are a few from an that old sketch book:

What I like about this way is that I allow myself to acknowledge the little details i'm so drawn to without feeling obligated to put down the entire scene that its in . It was also a good excercise in composition and arranging a picture for me.