City of light:
I’m in Paris at the moment. It’s wonderful.
Sometimes I walk around, smiling at each increment of wonder. I wish there were a better way to burn all this to my memory. I try to take pictures when I see something amazing. I probably have thousands, yet even more that I didn’t manage to take, or that simply can’t be photographed.
Embedding experiences
Of course there is a better way to remember; to draw or paint it.
It’s a process that embeds those experiences so deeply I feel like everything I’ve drawn is engraved on my soul. I can remember drawings I made years ago so clearly, almost mark-by-mark: museum studies, life drawings, many illustrated conversations and discussions, anatomy, architecture, development studies and further back to school, childhood, horses and the queens of England.
Drawing is a datum thread by which I navigate a blurred landscape of memory and emotion.
Navigating Drawing
Of course no life is long enough to engrave all those moments, and what of the things that are not seen? The other things that make us clutch to such simple moments of wonder as valuable, that drive us to comfort from the face of the engulfing tide.
That’s what I should be drawing.
