The previous entry gives a lot of the backstory about this piece, so I won't rehash it here. But it's done for now, breaking land speed records for a silverpoint. Worked from life this time- such a relief!- and in a fever. I fear that the connectedness I feel towards it is impairing my judgement about its relative merits, or lack thereof.
"rootbound/be still my heart."
It's off to Easton and the Academy Art Museum on Tuesday.
In the course of dog walking, and I do a lot of dog walking, I have the time to observe much- not just the places, but the rhythms of the seasons, dramatic and incremental shifts both. so it is that I have seen many objects out of place- that is to say, in unfamiliar contexts which cause me to reconsider them, and to shift the answer given to the question an artist must always ask: "Have you seen this before?".
The subject of this silverpoint in progress was a case in point. Upon returning home the back way through the wood behind my house, I happened to notice what I thought was a squirrel's nest, but one hanging awfully low in the tree. Turned out it wasn't a nest at all, but a denuded shrub, clipped and bare, that had been tossed up into the tree, where it hung, roots pointed upward for months. I figured that one day it would come down, and I'd have a better look, but it never did, and eventually all of the soil was washed off the roots which were incredibly compressed. Some time along the line, maybe after the snow came and it still hung there, I decided that it must have startled that bush quite a bit to find itself so high up in a tree, pointed in the wrong direction, and pretty much at that point a began to think about drawing it when the snow melted. Didn't know exactly why, or how, but the idea had started swirling.
The tree leafed out and hid the bald bush. The semester ended, and the bush was retrieved from the tree top. I thought about putting it into another tree top closer to home to draw it, nixed the idea. It was remarkably intact after all of the time it had spent so exposed and I needed it to be up close and personal. Mulling continued as other drawings were drawn, exhibits work organized and delivered, domestic obligations met, and a trip to the National Gallery to see the Silverpoint show made. I learned more in an hour staring at those pieces than I'd learned in years previous, and the realization that I'd only barely begun to exploit the possibilities of the medium was both dismaying and heartening, all at once. What touched me most of all was the sense of an almost forensic exploration that the medium afforded, and which those master draftsmen shamelessly practiced.
And so it was that I hoisted it on a length of rope, tied the rope to a sword (thinking of Occam's razor and the Gordian solution- because I fear I often fall prey to mixed metaphors...necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows), and turned it this way and that, registering how pot bound the roots were, and how they'd become convoluted and compressed, a state which probably led to the death of the plant, and led to why it had been flung into the wood, only to land like a bird in the top of a tree. Which I had never seen before, but which somehow resonated at just the right frequency.
So here's the progress report for "root/bound (be still my heart)"- 36" x 36". 85% done- time to turn it to the wall and then see it fresh again in a week or so. 
