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.
Click the cover for a preview of the book.
From famine and war to murder and suicide I have always sought ways which the visual artist could attract the viewer, hold their attention for long enough to see what’s in front of them and prompt a discussion. It’s the temptation of brightly coloured imagery used to create horrifying ideas, human ideas.
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Below is the link to amazon for the hardcover.
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.
‘The semitransparent Ostriches of Enceledus’, 5″ X 7″, pen on paper. It could be either, what were you thinking the last time you made a drawing of something? My favourite work is when I’m not thinking, which only happens alone, no cameras recording anything, then it would not be meditation. And for many artists that is the case. Preparing and making content for a page in order to attract interest to sell the work disrupts the work itself. Perhaps not so much for the younger generation which seems permanently on camera. For myself, I would have to set up cameras running all the time and learn how to ignore the fact they are there. I have tried over the many years of this blog, but its still the same effect. When I start a drawing or painting, I am not thinking about you, or anyone or anything else. When a camera is set up to record, that’s all I can think of, the cameras there, how should I sit or hold the brush for you to see what’s happening, so I am no longer creating the art, I’m creating a version of it for others to see. They don’t happen with the purpose of making money, however they are for sale, and I do need money to live and create more oddities.
How to draw a picture.
I seem to have difficulty thinking about the process of recording work as it happens. I am rarely thinking about the broadcast nature of it all now. For my website to work properly, lots of traffic, I should be posting regularly. It does work to a degree, but not really for selling art at the price it should be. For that, how they happen is private.
There are very few photographs of the start of a drawing, I have to think about it beforehand, which takes away the mystery of the process, which you cannot see.
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.
The trees across the road from the Centre of the Universe. The best thing is sitting on the roots of one and drawing the roots of the other, a neighbour of 95 years, and there they are.
Graham Houston Arts 