About

I draw.  Almost all of my work over the last eight years or so has been compressed charcoal on paper or pastel on paper.  I can get very saturated blacks and colors, and I can do almost unlimited editing and experiment, at least until the paper wears out, which happens with some frequency.  I push the medium as much as I can, developing techniques for erasure and masking, as well as techniques for making marks.  I grate the pastel with a file to reduce it to a powder that I can push around with a brush.

Drawing with charcoal and pastel, more than any kind of painting, shows the hand and the mood of the artist.  For me it is the freest and most expressive of the visual media.

As I have implied, I do not do a lot preparation for drawing.  It’s more a meditation than a planned excursion.  Serenity reports a catastrophe.  Aggression crosses lyricism.  Danger forms an alliance with innocence.

I do very little drawing outside of the studio.  None of that plein aire stuff.  I sit in the isolation of my studio, tentatively touching the edges of a bruise.