What is Drawing? Towards wholeness…

Drawing though the agency of line is a vehicle to express emotion: implied or explicit, however fragmented the sensation received from the subject, which gets formulated into consciousness upon contemplation. The outpouring consciousness from the experience seeks expression in its own way, through marks: uneven, thick, thin, curved, jagged, rolling, reluctant or swift lines articulating a particular emotion where the line makes the layers of emotion whole. The experience is memorized as real and the drawing surface harmonizes into a whole; in unity with one’s reality.

To engage with thoughts, and those of others

a larger consciousness. Sympathetic space.

The why of things, occurrences, stirrings, evocations,

the space between one's legs, a visage, the tilt of a head,

Spaces that certain people simply seem to inhabit.

(excerpted from my unpublished essay Speculatio through Drawing. 2011)

The Middle Kingdoms keeps playing Oppugner

This may come to haunt me someday, perhaps in getting a visa, or worse perhaps a distant future in calligraphy connected with Chinese calligraphers; but Chinese leaders truly fight some of the most inane battles, now including race issues—and worse on issues related to Buddhism which in any case reached China from what is now India. China with its resilience, its brand of capitalism grafted onto communism as well a highly inculcated sense of patriotism—has so much going for them. But still it continues to oppugn—in a continuum of opposition to India, which is on its own trip anyways.

http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne101211Battle.asp
The Battle for Buddha: The latest Indo-China spat is just another chapter in the ‘Great Game with Buddhist characteristics’, says Ashok Malik
“Beijing tried to convey,” a Ministry of External Affairs official then said, “that China, South Korea and Japan being nations of Mongoloid people were closer to East Asia, while India, Australia and New Zealand were not.” The target was India, which China wanted to keep out of the ASEAN inner track.”

Johnny ML on Ramdas Tadka (1968-2010)

Ramdas Tadka goes Behind the Shadow of Big Bose

http://johnyml.blogspot.com/2011/11/ramdas-tadka-goes-behind-shadow-of-big.html

An incisive piece that respectfully gets into peering within the persona artists create and pass off as having been integral to their beginnings. It is awesome to see Macwan bring, The Other JJs together to showcase Ramdas Tadka. This is certainly very rare in India, and Johnny ML has also done a splendid take by writing about the book. Johnny ML is compassionate, yet lays bare human/artistic mores, concerns with their individual trajectories—in seeing how the artists invited to speak of Ramdas Tadka essentially use the book, perhaps inadvertently as a platform for themselves. In a sense, I dare add—it succeeds in a very christian and gracious vein in the manner of acknowledging Tadka’s being, drive and hopes, much as Julius Macwan set out to do. The invited artists have all been there, done this that and the other, yet clarity is missing. The reason for their being part of the book seems to be clouded. Essentially success has not eluded them, but something called “Kalatmik manuski” has. Having said that this is not an affront but rather a nod to the survivors an African proverb, “until lions have their historians, the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

Having your ace and eating it too

 

Nothing worse than being regarded as an ace in the hole. Basically, being set up to be  manipulated instance by instance, among the many when your guard is lowered. The reasons ranging from living with certain values—a belief in goodness, compassion, grace, even the graciousness in permitting the other to tell you what you mean to them—although nothing of recent vintage will be offered to back up those acclamations of praise, gushed out in uneven breaths. Something is amiss, and it is not rediscovering affections raised by old memories; it is the realization that their worlds are incomplete. Jealousies too: that others are walking upon paths which they themselves have ignored. 

Some need has surfaced and their sights are set. Furthermore, no cordiality; warmth; affability; nor reciprocity, even if only to mask/soften selfish reasons. All such is anathema, as one very politically aware activist individual who years ago displayed fangs when I mentioned the congruity to be courteous/show courtesy. 

But all this matters not in the back stroking world, yet every attempt is made to commandeer anybody from outside, of qualities lacking within their fawning fraternity! The belief is that there is always someone who will stroke the most coarse backs. The idea is simply—that whatever you have is something that can be capitalized on, albeit projected as: you too can gain something. Essentially about owning/being owned: feudalism. 


Image details from, So Shall You Reap
http://www.flickr.com/photos/venantius/231316724/in/set-72157594350797294
Original size: http://www.flickr.com/photos/venantius/231316724/sizes/o/in/set-72157594350797294/

Reinforcing drawing; Learning about line via drawing and by carving it

Over the years I have been drawing quite a bit in ballpoint. It gives me an immediacy and reinforces an ongoing practice in terms of a sure line. Anyway, these are a few drawings for a seal design for a young woman with an unusual name: Kazusa. Normally, I would be using a brush and sumi/boku, rather than ballpoint/biro. Unorthodox but works for me. These designs will be finessed later or perhaps directly when carving. It has been a little over a year and a half since I began carving seals and have carved 73 or so stones, some on multiple sides, Carving seals has made me see line in ways that I would perhaps not have seen by only drawing on paper and other surfaces. More on this later.
 

The notes below correspond to the styles of seasl scripts as drawn in the image on the right.Right, top down:
1. Koukotsubun Oracle bone script (Chinese, Jiaguwen) 甲骨文
2. Kinbun (Chinese, Jinwen) 金文

Middle: 

1. Kinbun 金文 

2. Moushikei kun boshi 孟敬訓墓誌 (Chinese, Mèngjìngxun mùzhì), from the 新書道字典 Shin Shodo Jiten (A New Dictionary of Shodo/New Calligraphy Dictionary). This script is taken from the tomb stone of Moushikei. The Chinese have a tradition of absorbing various inputs in the pursuit of refining their calligraphic abilities, including copying from grave markers and stones; and this goes back many centuries. 孟敬 (Moushikei, a name), 訓 (teaching), 墓 (grave) 誌. collectively epitaph 墓誌 as on the grave “marker/stone.”

Left: 

1. Tetsusenshoten 鉃線小篆 (loose trans. Iron line Small seal script) 

2. Daiten Big Seal script (Chinese, Dazhuan) 大篆 

[btw, Smaller seal script Japanese Shoten, 

Chinese Xiaozhuang 小篆]

3. Kaninten 漢印篆

OK, its Halloween!

Earlier today, I was talking to Jocelyn, a friend of ours, who told me that she was born in a cemetery in Port au Prince, Haiti! There was no ambulance to be found at 2 am, so her mother, father, the grandmother and the maid began walking to get to L’Hospital Generale. Jocelyn’s mother was ready to deliver; and the only place close by was in the cemetery which was on the way down the mountain leading to the city. So, there is this entity/spirit Baron Samedi, Le Maître du cimetière (The Master of the cemetery). His presence is seen as light passing as a flash. So when Jocelyn was being delivered herfolks saw Baron Samedi passing by. As many Haitains have told her: Fille. vous êtes protégé. Vous êtes sous la protection de Baron Samedi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Samedi

Swallow coming

玄馬至 (つばめきたる, swallow coming).

Copied for practice from works of senior Tenkoku artists in Kyoiku Shuji text. Oct MMXI. In progress. 

These are all carved in reverse. So the ones on the left and middle are 至馬玄, and will read left to right 玄馬至 when impressed. The third seal on the left reads left to right, then bottom to top. The reading is as follows: first the one on the right 玄; in the second column there are two characters, but the bottom one 馬 precedes the last one 至–at the top!