“you can’t always get what you want…but if you try hard enough, you just might find, you get what you need…”
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been down in the dumps. Yep, I’ve been sick. I got the shingles around my eye which almost left me blind, but luckily an awesome Eye doctor saved my eye (and my sanity). His name is Dr. Michael Cooper and he works at Windham Eye Group.
Well, I stopped drawing and painting and mostly just slept and watched White Collar marathons. But now I’m almost all better and the itch to draw is back. Unfortunately, I’m out of practice and that brings me down too.
Enter my aunt Linda who provided a safe haven for me to recover in, her garden and my aunt Mika who provided a place for me to sleep and hugs when few others wanted to hug me.
And a couple days ago I went to the local library here in Mansfield, CT and I was browsing through the books, not really expecting to find anything new since I’d already browsed those shelves several times over the past two months and lo and behold I find an old yellow, hardcover book called The Act of Drawing by Edward Laning. Holy molly! This is the second best book on drawing, NOPE! it’s the BEST book on drawing I have ever read! And I had never heard of it before nor seen it. The best book on learning HOW to draw, i.e. how to SEE is Dr. Betty Edward’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but Laning’s book is inspirational and has MUCH to teach me even after so many books, museums and even a few years in university studying art. He explains the WHY like no one else has been able to do. He is to drawing what Brenda Ueland is to writing.
He begins the book by outlining quickly and directly the three touchstones of an artist’s life: practice, criticism, and study (not in books but rather from the original sources: the paintings and the drawings).
Then he writes one of the most powerful quotes I have read so far about art and drawing: “Drawing is an art, and art is the resolution of conflict and tension, the unification of opposites, the reconciliation of irreconcilables. Man is the social solitary and is hopelessly divided against himself; the division is intolerable to him. Art is the sole means by which he can live with himself.” (Laning, The Act of Drawing, 1971, p. 48)
(Why do books of this immense value recede into oblivion and forget? I cannot recommend this book enough.)
And then another thing happened to help pull me up. I received an email newsletter from Crista Cloutier’s The Working Artist and it gave me the last hint to get UNSTUCK. Because that’s exactly what had happened to me: I was stuck. I had “drawer’s block” and Christa’s email gave me the answer as to WHY. Thank you.
This is what the answer was: “Your be-ing is coming from your do-ing. You have it backwards. For your do-ing should always come from your be-ing.”
I have had many reasons to be grateful this week. My lovely wife, Pam, who is always there, my aunts and uncles, the gorgeous fall weather of Connecticut, Paul Simon and Jazz, and lovely kale! (Check out my wife’s blog to get her amazing kale and fish salad recipe)
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