w4. Stripper Drawing

My photorealist period began in the late 70's while still on the road. I made an easel to fit over the steering wheel of the bus - and no, I didn't use it while driving. Before that, in Florida during the '60s, I was an abstract expressionist , showing in a Palm Beach gallery, then a writer on the road, and then a photorealist in watercolor. After the bus broke down I began to sell those watercolors in a gallery in Little Rock, but I burned out on that too. In 1978 I had to give up the camera because it didn't see things the way my eyes did. I quit cold turkey and started learning to draw - and to see - all over again. Like Watson, I saw, but I did not observe. Now I began discovering what I'd been missing. I carried a sketch pad with me everywhere. I couldn't afford models so I started drawing the dancers in strip clubs, mostly at the Prime Time. I call this my drawing-in-the dark period. I would scribble the best I could in the club and then try to make something of it later in my studio. This drawing was one of the first of those. It was before I got into the history of pre-patriarchal religions, but this already seems to have some of the awe of those ancient temples of the goddess, before spirit and flesh were torn apart and made enemies to each other. The W Series These are mostly drawings, with an occasional print, that I had been keeping in my studio as reference material since 1983 and took to Taylor's Contemporanea Fine Arts in Hot Springs in 1996. That is, this is what's left of that batch, which I numbered w1 though w67. This was a salon gallery, a beautiful home transformed into a gallery by the owner, Carolyn Taylor. Upstairs was the Criswell room, my paintings on the wall, sculptures on pedestals, some chairs and a sofa for watching my animations. Carolyn's husband Delbert shrink-wrapped these works on paper onto foamcore boards, all archival materials, and during her monthly openings Carolyn would spread them out on a large table. Many were sold before she retired and shut down the gallery a few years ago. Since then they have been in a box. I've decided it's time to spread them out on the table again.