Garden Forms

After doing a quick drawing today, of a corner of my studio, I leafed through the pages of the rather old sketchbook. This drawing caught my eye. It was obviously done years ago in my Vermont garden, which was full of ferns, and I guess at the time I didn't think it was very successful. But today I loved the energy of the lines, the interplay of the forms, and could see all kinds of possibilities lurking in that foliage for a relief print. (Note to self: search out your forms with blunt, chunky objects, not those sharply pointed ones you seem to prefer...)

It's odd, isn't it, how we change, and how it's sometimes so hard to see the potential of a creative idea or expression at the time. A good argument for keeping sketchbooks and notebooks of poetry and writing, and actually going back through them once in a while!

 

Comments

[Kristin Berkey-Abbott]

I do keep everything: journals, notebooks, scraps of paper, sketchbooks, rough drafts of all sorts. My graduate training taught me how important all those things might be to later scholars. But going back through them--that's the part I never quite manage, and certainly not on a regular basis.

Thanks for the reminder!

[john]

Years ago i started keeping moleskin journals,writing down quotes and poems i found i liked, excerpts from books and magazines, and journal entries usually on trips. I have found if i am mulling over a problem, usually a friendship or relationship issue, i sometimes write down the problem which sometimes somehow makes it manageable or a solution presents itself.I take one with me as moleskins are easy to carry to lots of places like pubs and restaurants and refer to it if i am sitting by myself.Its a blessing

[Lorianne]

I find that my own sketches and journals always look better with age. I think I'm so "glad to see them" as a reminder of lost time, I look at them far less critically than I did when I made them.

It's like seeing an old friend: you're so happy to see the person, you don't obsess over the flaws.

[Dick]

I never, never dump anything remotely perceivable as creative. I still have files full of hair-raisingly awful poetry and prose from my teens and way beyond. There's a palpable continuity embodying traceable change and growth across the decades that is invaluable in these later years. And how right you were, Beth, to keep this drawing!

[Anne]

I,too save stuff of all kinds -- drawings, started and abandoned journals, old exams. I find that looking at old exams can be surprising and sometimes kind of sad when I ask myself in astonishment, "Did I really know all that?"

Your drawing is full of energy, but I find that energy in general in your work which is one of the things that makes it so appealing.