The Path 10 Drawing

One of the most amazing things about nature is how personal it is – how much it can fire up the individual imagination, and function as a metaphor for growth and change. My series of drawings “The Path” seems to depict, at the most basic level, sea grasses. Yet, they’re also highly abstracted, brightly colored environments. I think of the narrow tapered shapes as forming a site of contemplation for the inner self, a kind of locus of discovery. Each drawing is a slightly different study in composition and color. Drawn on large sheets of Stonehenge paper, the process is very labor intensive. Each drawing takes about 3 months to complete. I use up hundreds of Prismacolor pencils, building up multiple layers of color to achieve intensity and rich tonality. At a distance their surfaces appear unified, but go up close and you can see that they’re really composed of many small marks that merge into a smooth sheen. I use bold colors for their power to evoke sensations, and elicit an emotional response from the viewer.