Another White

In creating this post, my intention had been to show, as I had promised in an earlier post, images of Saints on a Bridge. Well, that changed. On a recent visit to my local market, I noticed a single flower alone and forlorn alongside a display of a dozen fresh bouquets. It was a paperwhite, a leftover from the Christmas holidays. Flowers don’t speak English, of course, but the feeling I got from this one was, “please take me to your studio and draw me before I die.” So I did; here is the sketch.

A surprising thing that often happens when I’m working/playing is a kind of inversion: I draw a tree or a person or a flower and in return, it seems to draw me. In this sketch, I began drawing stems and blossoms, but as I listened, I gradually shifted focus to the bulb and the roots. Why, I don’t know, I was just letting myself be guided. I’d like to say, “I thought such and such,“ but these aren’t thoughts; they’re more like insights or imaginings: “A flower has no purpose other than to be itself, a flower. To exist with its fragrant petals for its own sake, for it’s own short life. This sketch is like that. It has no purpose other than to be what it is, a kind of “paying attention.” It will not appear later in a painting. It’s just the record of a man with a pencil and some colors observing something that interests him.”

What I learned from the flower is this: “I need three things to live: sunlight, water and dirt. I rise out of darkness and dirt, just like you humans. You expect enlightenment and illumination to descend to you from above like the Holy Ghost, but it also arises, like me, from below.”

Next: Saints on a Bridge