June 29, 2010: A year ago today I broke both arms in a horrific bike accident. After three months with arms in casts, surgeries to embed pins, screws and a metal plate in my wrists, physical rehabilitation and a year of strength training, I’m basically back in action. Aside from occasional soreness in my right hand, scars are the only evidence that my arms were ever broken.
That ordeal precipitated a change in my art. I suppose I had a vague sense of restlessness even before the accident, but upon resuming drawing I couldn’t seem to work in my established style. I tried to render a few ideas that had been gestating in the interim, but it just wasn’t happening. I felt listless generally, and uninspired.
In order to get back in the flow of drawing again, I attended one of our open figure drawing sessions at the McGuffey Art Center, where I have a studio. To my surprise, I was pretty good at it! My first figure drawings, of a flamenco dancer, had a spontaneity and vigor that made me want to do more. Keep in mind that I hadn’t seriously drawn from life since my year at Parson’s, back in 1989.
So I started going to the twice-weekly sessions, quickly filling one sketch pad full of nudes and drawings from life. I enjoyed working with a model, instead of spending all my creative time alone and in my head. Even when it was not going well my struggles had an investigational quality. Soon I was translating these sketchbook drawings into finished paintings or prints:
Kat, 2009. Etching, 7½ x 6"
Reclining Nude, 2009. Linocut, 7½ x 6"
The irony is that my art was finally receiving a degree of praise and attention, all for the old work, just as I was on to something new. In fact there was an impending retrospective of my artwork at a modern art museum, for which I had to prepare. I did produce two new pieces in the former style for the Taubman show: a map of Roanoke, and a four-color etching titled Sexy City. Both turned out beautifully but the process was less than satisfying. That idea felt tapped, like I was adhering to rules I’d set for myself, instead of enjoying the kind of structured play that results in the unexpected.
Sexy City, 2009. Four-color etching
That’s why I decided to officially retire the former style and fully embrace the new thing. Though I am proud of the body of art I call my “comic-book-y” style, and will still draw that way on commission, in my current work I aspire to master drawing realistically. The challenge is to make an idea one’s own- to forge an individual style that is representational yet recognizably me. Here and there have been little glimpses of what it might become. Starting anew is exciting and somewhat daunting, but at its best art is a process of discovery.