Portraits

My daily art project, 270 days in, has evolved yet again. I started making portraits of dogs, then a cat, and most recently, this human. I didn't expect, when I decided to try my hand at drawing a human face, that I'd land on this one. But this face has gripped my attention for the last two years, a face no more or less human than any other, though it's easy to lose track of that fact when emotions run high.

Jane Fonda got skewered in the media for her statements about having radical empathy for Donald Trump. No wonder. She's asking us to do a very difficult thing— extend compassion to a person who wields power in a dangerous, destructive way. She isn't asking us to condone or support his behaviors, she's asking us to see his humanity. "This is a man who was traumatized as a child by his father, who had a mother that didn’t protect him,” she said. “And the behavior is the language of the wounded.”

246 Days Later...

I'm on a roll, folks, making and posting art every day (on Facebook and Instagram, go see for yourself). Though I started on January first without any clear plan, at this point I intend to keep it up, at least until the end of the year.

It feels good to apply myself to this creative task—to explore color and texture and composition, and to use up my hoard of art supplies (while sticking to a resolution to—for now anyway—avoid buying anything new).

But to keep this up day after day and still find the process engaging, I need to be digging into something meaningful. There has to be personal inquiry. I need to be strengthening my voice, sharing my vision, honing in on something I want to say—about life, about nature, about beauty, about engagement in the world.

Partway into this project, I stumbled into making fashion collages while exploring my thoughts and feelings about female bodies, female beauty, and female strength. I still plan to do more in that vein.

In the meantime, I'm making drawings with Sharpie markers, landscapes that range from pure abstraction to almost-realism. I can feel a part of my mind struggling as I make these, in the same way a writer might struggle for the right word to signify meaning.

There's something I'm trying to articulate in these new drawings, something about the magic of the natural world, about the vibrancy and potential in every living thing, every living moment. Every life.

I want to be entirely present in every moment. And I want you with me.

That's all I've figured out so far.