Time Spent Fishing

Afternoon Dream
Acrylic 30x15 $225

Fishing is a symbolic act. Artists are constantly fishing, first for ideas and then for the way to bring them to fruition. We bait our hooks with a need, a desire, to make a new painting or drawing or whatever. We throw that hook into the waters of consciousness, of memory and imagination, the great Cosmic Ocean. Sometimes we wait for days or weeks for a nibble, sometimes the fish is there waiting for us as if it knows our name. We reel in our catch and begin to see it for the first time. Then the magic—and the work—begin.

Depths Of Time 3: Honor The Earth

Depths Of Time 3: Honor The Earth
Ink & Colored Pencil 22x30 $550

The third painting in my Depths Of Time series is complete. This new one has a greater richness of color and texture than I've been able to achieve before. I'm not sure why it worked better, but I think it has to do with the particular sequence of colors in the inking and pencil layering. The inking is unpredictable as to density and exact pattern, and what I get each time is still a surprise. That doesn't keep me from trying new things each time to have more control over the result, but it's still a gamble. With the colored pencils, the sequence of layering and the time in between applying the layers also produces differing results. The translucence of the wax in the pencil pigments actually makes every layer visible as long as they're not too dark, so up close you see not just the color impression of the mix of hues, but at the same time, each separate hue.

The title actually comes from the theme of Annie Howden's next show starting in May at Howden Gallery, "Celebration Of Honor". My central theme of this series is to make visible the complexity of the invisible Earth beneath our feet, the Earth we seldom see and rarely notice. The roughly 4.5 billion years the Earth has existed are all there, written in that stone and dirt that our green world grows upon. It feels right to me to honor that time, and all the change that has taken place in that time.