Tag: creative process

Marks

…

For a time in 2014 I was exploring and playing with ancient alphabets. It began with being outside at night, observing constellations and copying the Greek letter names of the stars to help memorize them. It wasn’t long before I was as fascinated with the marks and their origins as with the night sky. One thing led to another and soon I was copying Phoenician pictographs and the Sanskrit alphabet. At the same time my notebook was filling up with lines and pages of spontaneous free form marks. The marks were a combination of energy and abstract image. Eventually my interest shifted, I became absorbed in something else and the time was forgotten. There’s a sample in the post “Late autumn forest” from October 2014. 

Seven years later, in the fall of 2021 I bought an Apple Pencil, thinking I could start using my iPad as a notebook. It took a long time before I was comfortable with that process. However, although the idea was for note taking, it was my drawing that took off in a way it probably hadn’t since I was a child.  

I was surprised to see myself pick up where I left off in 2014. Pages of marks began flowing in a manner that felt like writing or calligraphy. Within the text, ideas and associations emerged.

A mark could take on a life of its own. 

Story fragments emerged with the same light and easy spontaneity. Some with words. Some without.

Letting go

Remember when I kept drawing the same card over and over until I realized it wasn’t about the card but the book and I found Tao?

It’s happening again.

Not the mapping of stars writing ancient alphabets hexagrams carefully drawn diagrams of barn renovations or words letter by letter. There’s something else.

 

Last night I dreamed of black bear running back and forth between us like a happy dog fear turning to sorrow as shots rang my eyes opened. Driving to town I saw crow on a wire scratching his head. Later I struck the index finger of my left hand hard with the hammer. The nail will turn from blue to black and be lost. A new one will grow in its place.  

 

 

Ghost at the gate

I closed the gate, sat down and opened the thin silver notebook. The ghost had returned. A presence on the edge of moments willed empty. Insistent though not insisting. Suggesting uncertain memories, images without roots to weave and curl around things which may or may not have happened. She whispers about a nest. Nonchalantly loops a snare.

And so I walked to the stone and timber well and dropped my bucket into the deep black hole. In the silence of the fall one horned owl called another. Colour faded, stars brightened as evening edged into night and finally a distant, resonant splash. Somewhere down there the wooden bucket floated briefly, tipped and slowly sank. I waited as it filled and then began to draw it back, heaving hard on the rope, all too familiar with the unpredictable possibilities of the load. Fists clenched tight, my arms ached as I hauled, the bucket swaying, bumping against damp walls, weight increasing with every inch gained. Then all at once it came. I stumbled backwards almost losing the rope which flew up fast, too fast as the back of my head struck the earth and black blue to purple dawn spread across the eastern sky.

I don’t know what happened. I heard the gate open then bang shut again.