New Art: (#8) In a Globe of Frogs, the Moth Unfurls its Moistened Wings

I didn’t think I was going to do a B&W one. I wanted them all in color. But then, it just came out so good in black and white, and as my girlfriend put it, “spooky”, that I didn’t think I could improve upon it by putting it in color. There’s something to be said for creating an environment and content using only black and white, and only drawing from the imagination.

This one pretty much drew itself. I tried NOT to think about what I was doing while working on it, and resisted temptations to mentally engage in a very deliberate way, such as to articulate a recognizable form that was emerging. In the center is a sort of diagonally striated prong. But, to me it reads easily and inescapably as a person, in profile.

There’s ambiguity. I wanted this to be dreamy, even hallucinogenic. There are bizarre shifts in reality that can only happen in the imagination.

While I was working on this I was listening to audio books. It’s interesting that I can listen to a book at the same time I can make art. Rarely do I need to pause one or the other in order to focus on either. So, while doing this my mind was following a story, and not forming sentences in my head about what I wanted to do next with the drawing. I just, as much as I could, which is not all that hard if you sorta’ “let go”, worked by something like instinct. Suggestions would come and I’d just do them, uncritically. I thought in this way I might better give expression to the unfiltered imagination, or let it take its own snapshot of itself with less filtering from the intellect.

I love the little, accidental or fortuitous details, like how delicate the wings are, or, there is a shadow under a floating hand-like appendage, over an object in the upper right that suggests a face. I find that shadow both quieting and disquieting. And I don’t really have the word for the specific quality of the wings.

It’s realistic, but it isn’t waking, quotidian reality. It’s familiar though. You can almost remember where your been before where this recalls.

Some of my work has psychedelic and spiritual overtones, admittedly. But to be safer, we can just say this piece is Surrealist.

To see other posts about other pieces in this series, go here.

And here’s a screen show with all 8 images so far.

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Or, if you prefer, you can see them in a click-through gallery:

 

Oh, yes, and the title comes from lyrics to a song by Robyn Hitchcock.

 

Thanks for checking out my art and my blog.

~ Ends

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