Drawing my desk
The still-lives formed by objects I use everyday have always found their way into my drawings. Maybe it's just because they're there, and it's easier to pick up a pen and pencil and draw them than to make an artificial grouping, but I suspect it's both a desire to record these scenes, which feel personal and intimate, and a sense that they represent certain things about me: that they are alternate self-portraits, in a way. I did the sketch above last night, but thinking about it sent me searching back through old sketchbooks to find some others. I know there are more in sketchbooks back at the house, too, but here are a few examples I unearthed here at the studio:
This one is from early March, 1988 - part of my desk and window in Vermont - the imperfectly drawn jug here is the same one at the top left in first image in this post. It's funny how a black-and-white pencil sketch like this returns me to feeling of that place immediately, even more than a photograph does.
Same Vermont window: a set of Shaker boxes, same pinecones as I have now, and a very different cat. Her name was Madonna, and she lived with us for fifteen years. I was so sad when she died.
From a couple of years ago, a warm-up sketch when I was just starting to draw again: a small Moleskine notebook, an eraser, a small wooden box from Germany given to me by a friend back in the 1960s. I keep change in it.
Maybe 18 months ago? Close-up of same desk and objects as in the top drawing. I'm fond of that carved sandelwood box and Chinese porcelain bowl; the fan was a gift from my friend in China, and that's a little bronze horse beside it, also Chinese. The embroidered purse below it, in the desk, is Palestinian work, a gift from J.'s aunt during one of her visits here from Beirut. To its left is a small porcelain cup with a rose decal, very old, which belonged to my dear great-aunt Inez.
And this is a weird little charcoal drawing from last year, of the box, the fan, the porcelain bowl, and the incense burner in a brass dish that also holds some pine cones, sycamore leaves, and two poppy pods. Behind them, and also in the top picture, is an inlaid Persian frame and miniature painting that belonged to my father-in-law.
Looking again at the top image, the most-recent drawing, I notice that I included both a painted mug that's always held brushes - it's a coronation mug showing King George and Queen Mary that my mother bought on a trip to Canada when she was a girl -- and, on the desk surface, the embroidered purse I brought back from Mexico, from the stall photographed in the previous post.
Make of it all what you will!
