MagdaleneL, I’ve always enjoyed drawing. In a house that we lived in until I was five, I remember laying on the kitchen floor with my tummy on the cool tile floor. We didn’t have AC in that house and I remember that felt nice and cool to lay on while I drew. I remember in grade school, 2nd grade I believe, on a rainy day the teacher pulled out a large role of butcher’s paper and said it was for me to do my drawings on. I don’t remember anything else of that moment other than being a little excited about it.
I got an art scholarship to the University of Iowa. I really enjoyed print making. Especially etching. Virginia Meyers was my instructor. In my senior portfolio review she told me I and the work I was doing reminded her of two other artists, Lasansky and Grant Wood. I can’t remember much more of that conversation except that at the end she looked at me and said “Joel, you’ll never be happy unless your doing your own work.” I was running really, really late for the next review and didn’t really think much more of that meeting until decades later.
In 1990, I went back to school for computer graphics. Seemed like the thing to do since I was really very happy as a cartographer. I did have a studio at that time where I did mostly commission works. But I only worked at night or when I had spare time. The commissions paid for the studio. When I went back to school I took with me about 12 commissions. It kept me busy for the first semester. Most other students who lived on campus didn’t realized I lived on campus because they only saw me for classes. It was a small school and there were only 200 some students who lived on campus.
This is about the time I stopped drawing. Some of it was I couldn’t bare to do another commission work. Some of it was something else. But In 1990, I drew my last drawing for about 2 decades. Until 2009.
In August of 2009, my seven year old son was drawing at the table. He’d never seen any of my drawings. I pretty much got rid of most of them. And he looked at me and asked if I would like to draw with him. I said sure and started to draw a tree. And my hands felt alive again. The next day we went out to find things to draw. And I have been trying to draw everyday since.
Most of the time I am feeling like I’m trying to catch up to where I once was. But I think that I am mostly just in a process of trying to understand something. I’m not sure what. When I am drawing I feel complete and at peace. I feel at one with my world. When I don’t, I am lost. I am detached. I am without purpose. I never see myself as “good”. I’m not really concerned about the skill or technique. It is some kind of odd battle to find an answer to a question that I don’t really know what the question is. But it feels like the answer will come the more I draw.
And, I’m not sure that I am actually drawing. I abuse line. Line wants life and character. It wants the curve of a nude and the flow of a river. And I just drag it about 1/2 inch with a mechanical pencil.
It’s late and this may be a ramble to find a way to help my soul to sleep and I’ve gone on way too long. I appreciate the kindness, encouragement, and thoughtfulness this group provides. I enjoy reading the thoughts of others and trying to imagine what you all must be like in person. I’m mostly searching for me in the drawings I do. Sometimes I think I can almost touch it, sometimes I think I’m just swinging at bad pitches. But somewhere in the cross hatch that weaves in and around everything, I think I might find me.
Dear Joel. I was really moved by reading about your life and the role art played in that life. How you lost your art and regained it. What a great teacher to tell you to do your OWN work. Maybe that is why you lost your ability to draw for a while.. the commissions and having to do what others want you to draw so you lost heart as your heart’s desire was to to do what comes from within you so you lost your muse.. but I am so happy you got her back.
I do understand entirely what you mean when you say when you draw you are at peace and lost to the world. Other people may abuse liquor to get that feeling we who draw and paint get from it. It takes you away from this world which I kind of think artists in general don’t like very much. I know I certainly don’t. Everything here dies become ill suffers and ends. In the world we create for ourselves with our pens, brushes and paints it is a world where beauty and truth alone flourish, that is.. if we are TRUE to ourselves or are allowed to be so we bring forth what is inside ourselves not in just the pursuit of money. Not that I am knocking money.. after all we have to use it to buy our tools etc. But yeah wasn’t older better times so much more conducive to painting when painters had sponsors who paid them to paint just because they liked the work of that artist. So the artist could maintain their integrity and their loyalty to their own visions.
I never believed I had much talent so although teachers at school etc always told me I drew well and although I enjoyed it I never had the money for art materials. I know good artists will use whatever is on hand. So I guess I was just being sulky by not just using what I could get haha. But eventually when I could afford good paints and pens etc, AND had the time to, well there was no stopping me. I usually draw daily even if it’s just something small. But as I always do unfortunately I get bored with one thing, so I paint with watercolours, oils, Acrylics, pen and ink, even a type of watercolour crayon i found by caran d’ache, gouache, acrylic inks, other inks etc. So obviously I will never be really good at anyone of them since I want to do it all. But yeah as I said to you, we must go where the muse leads us, if it is into being spread too thin so be it. I can’t be anyone but who I am.
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