Wink :: 1980-1981
When I think back, I realize that many of my paintings from college were figurative. I didn't think of myself as a figurative painter then, or do I now, but sometimes they were the focus of the painting. I'm not particularly good at drawing the figure. I did participate in a life drawing class a couple of years ago though—once a week in the evening for about eight weeks, with 10-15 other folks. They took donations at the door to pay the facilitator and the model. I drew men and women on large pads of newsprint with charcoal, graphite and chalk. During the two-hour session we'd get to draw ten to twelve poses, with a range of 1 to 30 minutes. Over the course of the session, I came out with a couple of drawings that were OK, and the rest weren’t.
Whenever I've played Pictionary over the years and was required to draw a figure, human or animal, they were chaotic scribbles that took me forever. My teammates usually just stared at the drawing and then at me in disbelief. "I'd need to be a clairvoyant to guess what you're drawing." I was better at drawing things like wind. The figures my father drew were crisp and clear. He always captured the action quickly and precisely. "It's a person raking the yard, um… it's a person watering the lawn!" “Yes!”
Wink was a painting I did in undergraduate school. Somehow it turned into a head-and-shoulders thing. It wasn't a very good painting, but I treated the figure in a way I never had before, so I'd always held on to it for posterity. I shipped it home from my parents' basement in Montana years ago. It’d been in storage for at least twenty-five years. Once it arrived here, I unpacked it and leaned it against a wall in our living room. It remained there for a couple of weeks before my wife said anything. Eventually she asked me what the painting was about. I was surprised by her question. I wasn't surprised because she asked a question, but because of the question she asked. I assumed the image was so obvious to everyone that it would be hard to interpret it any other way. In fact, that was the primary reason I disliked it. It felt limiting. After I told her what it was, she said she still didn't really see it. Maybe. Kinda? I was relieved. It kind of changed everything. It reminded me to relax about what I think I'm painting because I often don’t know, and I can't usually control what it becomes anyway. Just painting is the point.
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"I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it." Frank Gehry
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Songs :: Moods for Moderns by Elvis Costello, Runaway and Home by Bonnie Raitt
© C. Davidson