This link will take you to the e-book on Amazon.
A fellow painter of large pieces said to me I should make a record of some kind, a gathering of little images and ideas created from the large ones. Maybe stitched or glued together.
As I have many large paintings, and a great deal of other work, the idea of having something small I could hold in my hand was very enticing. As much for others as it was for me to see what I got up to from my death bed.
Part of it anyway. I should frame these, they are better protected, even if bulkier to move around. These are out of the light so that’s a protection too.
I should make a page of text to go opposite each drawing, not an explanation, something like a doodle only with words.
They are all 8″ X 10″. Pencils on paper. If I were to frame them it should be at least a 16″ X 20″ frame, or larger. I find it draws attention into the subject better if you can occupy more of the viewers vision.
Pencilling my favourite thing.
Once I had recovered enough breath to walk further afield, sitting around the trees was still the best feeling. Maybe there is more oxygen in their vicinity. I never really learned to draw or sketch formally. I had a few oil painting lessons from a local learning centre when I was a teenager. This is all entirely self taught. When I look at a blank piece of paper or canvas or wood, my intention is to create a finished piece, not a sketch. However I have made oil paintings from these drawings.
‘A tree beside the dam in the park.’, 8″ X 10″, pencil on paper.
‘The foot of the tree in the park across the road from the centre of the universe.’, 9″ X 12″, pencil on paper.
‘The other side of the foot of the tree in the park across the road from the centre of the universe.’, 9″x12″, pencil on paper.
These drawings were among the first I made following yet another health disaster. Lung disease from living in industrial cities. Doing industrial jobs, I was a sign painter when it was done with paint, also highly toxic, full of lead and every other element of suspicious sources to make real colour that lasts. Forever. That’s what it said anyway. At this point in time I was coping with the 8th time my lung collapsed. Like a balloon popping, you can hear it when it happens. I recovered by sitting on trees and drawing them. The roots mean something to me, the interface to the underworld. The part the tree knows but you don’t. They also look like foothills of mountain ranges like the Himalaya’s which are getting bigger as the glaciers disappear.
An unquiet mind. A long time ago, decades before I was diagnosed as bipolar ( the name seems to shift with the movements of psychiatry) I discovered drawing without thinking helped with the agitation that is ongoing with bipolar disorder. I would liken it to meditation, which I have tried but I prefer the physical act of drawing to contribute to the universe. Not quite doodling though, these usually take a lot of time, my body can be physically exhausted, but my mind will not shut up. For days this can go on, seemingly endless. When I was young, I could put it to use working, but now its just exhausting. The digital work is useful then, I can make an eBook from all the work already in hand. And having an actual hardcover of these works is even better. So much of my work, even now, is very large. Too large for most normal living room walls.
Art fuel,
Coffee and lots of it. Thank you for visiting.
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‘Pelvic Tumor’, 9″ X 12″, pencil on paper.
The pelvic bone of a soldier that had survived a cannonball to the chest at Fort William Henry.
Scanned and photoshopped pencil drawing.
‘Femur:Broken’, 9″ X 12″, pencil on paper, 2001.
From my anthropology days.
‘Neurotica’, 9″ X 12″, pencil on paper, 2009.
Graham Houston Arts 