Kickstarter

These drawing were for my Kickstarter project "100 Cloudscape Drawings."  These are the first 10 drawings. Several of them feature exposed paper.  Dimensions are listed.

Reaching to film, video and analog recording, these drawings are meant to be aged, found objects.  Mirroring my Alaskan upbringing, the oil paint swatches are made with the lower temperatures of color.  Never are they hothouse yellow or tropical reds and violets.  There is little or no vegetation in the northernmost parts of Alaska, which is one of the two requirements for a desert.

Like an unseen spirit in the background, to me place of origin can stay behind long after we leave that place.  The drawings were meant to have the contrary elements of darkness, memory, and the formal years of childhood.

Renaissance painting have splitting and cracks due to centuries-old paint drying over hundreds of years.  With mixed-media such as oil-paint and rolled-on gesso that is immediately possible, and all effects are intentional.  For me the look of a found object can imply that it can be old, from a future timeline, or otherworldly.

The smaller drawings are like vignettes, are transportable and similar to prints of larger paintings.  While you can’t carry large paintings around, you can carry small drawings, which are in place of photographs or cellphone pictures.  The small size also has the sketch-like possibility of making larger versions afterwards.  The compositions are worked out ahead of time, and the effects are more immediate than a pencil study.

Moreover, what surprised me the most about the making of these smaller drawings, since the first ones in the 2010’s were quite large, is that they retained a range of detail and tone.  Mid-ranges, are there, as they were originally in the larger drawings.  Lost-and-found edges, or out-of-focus and sharp, in-focus edges, are there too.