Learning to draw begins – or it did for me -with seeing shapes. Cones and squares and spheres. Shape is the first illusion to acquire.
Lately, I am spending an inordinate amount of time revisiting “beginnings.” My beginnings. Our beginnings. We open bins long stashed in the basement, the musty vaults securing evidence of our passage. We dig through the artifacts and discuss what gave us shape.
Important people shaped us. Many unimportant people shaped us, too. Circumstance and serendipity chipped away the stone that now reveals who we think we are. Shape, I am learning, is as much about what we hold onto as what we determine to let go. At long last setting down a closely held burden creates inner space, shape by another name. Picking up the burden of another to help them with their load necessitates a change of shape inside and between.
I recently decided that it was time to go back to basics. I have my sketchbook close at hand. I’m paying attention to shape, both inside and out. I wonder what I have forgotten about shape and what I need to re-member. If shape, in all its permutations, is the first illusion to acquire, I suspect it is also the last illusion we learn to release.
Some themes remain incomplete. I’ve painted this series-of-shapes over and over again.
read Kerri’s blogpost about SHAPES
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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Seeing | Tagged: artifacts, artistry, basics, beginning, change, circumstance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, drawing, illusion, inner life, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, memory, outer life, remembrance, serendipity, shape, story, studio melange, the melange |
The Direction of Intention 
Hell of an artist! You should be proud. “Shapes.” Reminds me of one of the greatest songs ever recorded when Clapton and Beck were together: “Shapes of Things” (Yardbirds, 1966). My “art” is poetry, it would be music, but we can’t afford the recording machinery. Bother. Keep on Keeping on!
Ah, a great song. Poetry, I’m told, is the highest art so who needs recording machinery;-)