Skip links

Noah's Work-a-Day Page

Main navigation

Hush (Drill)

by

18″ x 24″

hushnah01_small

I’ve had a policy of not including outside sources on the Work-a-day page, but this seems necessary.

On Sept 25, 1864, an ancestor of mine wrote a letter to her daughter from the family home ‘Sweet Auburn’ outside Natchez, Miss. To save paper, which was in low supply, the letter was cross-written. This is such an anomaly of Victorian letter writing, happened quite a bit during a time when formal letter writing was common, but paper was not, and postage expensive. The penmanship is so elegant, but when it’s written on top of itself it gets all jangled up. The writing, nearly indecipherable, is about the current (bad) state of things (war).

cross-writing_01

Then sixty-five years later, the letter writer’s great-great-granddaughter (my grandmother) was learning to write in her seventh grade class in Natchez. This is drill 20.

drill20(recto)

The ancestors keep giving me stuff to draw about, I’m barely touching the surface here. More cross-writing/drawing to come.

Related Images:

The Eighty-Ninth of May, 1930

by

48″ x 48″
eightyninthofmay_small

This is a hard-boiled son of a gun, related in theme to a number of paintings I’ve done of orphans, frontal group portraits of children. Some of the children in the Orphans paintings may in fact be orphans for all I know, but more the point for me is that the source photographs are old enough to nearly ensure that all portrayed have all lived and died. Then it’s not the child, but the image of the child, that is the orphan.

The surface of this four foot square canvas has been worked and scraped many times over the last year, was nearly cut off the stretchers recently. Then I saw a grainy photograph of my great uncle’s second grade class that was recently published in the Baton Rouge newspaper. The caption recalls the two-room school house, the mule-drawn bus, the hand-me-downs. I put the canvas back on the easel again and they hopped right on.

Related Images:

Fern

by

8″ x 12″
fern_small

“I constantly have to negotiate with my doubts.” – Peter Doig

Related Images:

Pecans

by

18″ x 24″

pecans_small

This drawing is based on two dimly xeroxed ancestral photographs taken by a family member in the 1910’s.

I recently read that Faulkner said his writing was a process of “sublimating the actual into the apocryphal.” One of the aspects I love about drawing is that its connection to ‘reality’ is always spurious. As it references one actuality, it simultaneously creates another, separate actuality.

Related Images:

Sources and Expenditures

by

9″ x 12″
sourceandexpenditure_small

The snake is saying, “For me, drawing is a source of energy, while painting is the expenditure of energy.” I really have to say that’s my experience as well. As much as they have over-lapping concerns, the stylus and the brush are very different instruments and when I go looking for how an artist thinks, I look at their drawings. It’s like looking at their drawings gets you closer to the source of what motivates their ideas.

Related Images:

Twisting My Beard

by

6″ x 8″

twistingmybeard_small

This one I’m twisting my beard, a nervous habit I can’t seem to break (though I honestly haven’t tried). Self-portraits often strike me as sad. I don’t make self-portraits very often, but I like seeing other people’s self-portraits. What a touching and awkward thing to record, studying and drawing one’s own face. I do love Jim Dine’s horribly awkward self-portraits. Rembrandt’s almost don’t count. Maybe my favorite self-portrait is old Bonnard in his later years, purple fists up in the bathroom mirror.

Related Images:

Weevil Sanders Goes to Town

by

6″ x 8″
weevilsandersgoestotown_small

Last week I wanted to call the “Chicken and Beard Man” drawing something about Weevil Sanders. But I didn’t know who Weevil Sanders was and thought I would at some point, but I still don’t. So here he is on his way to town.

Related Images:

Why Is Six Afraid of Seven

by

6″ x 8″
because789_small

Because seven ate nine. On another note, the word stylus comes to us from Etruscan, as few words do.

Recently talking with Bill B. about polysemy and open meanings in drawing and writing. He said about one poem “as much polysemy as the poem can bear.” (phrasing taken from something Jane Freilicher said, about wanting “as much light as the painting can bear”).

Related Images:

Of the Federal Occupation

by

8″ x 10″
ofthefederaloccupation_small

I came across a photograph of a Confederate army camp. What struck me about the image was the manner of the soldiers’ poses, one draped over another’s lap, comfy as BFF’s at a sixth grade sleepover.

Related Images:

Periodic Companions #14

by

9″ x 12″
per_comp_pg14_small

Here’s another drawing from Periodic Companions, the novel by Laynie Browne, for which I made drawings. Poor wee thing.

Related Images:

Collaborative Frieze

by

16″ x 140″
cf_frieze_small

I made this today with the students in my Drawing the Myth and Daydream class at the Drawing Studio.  It’s really long and so in order to see it, please click the image, then enlarge it again.  Look at all the archetypes and situations unfolding!  I love this strange thing.

Related Images:

Going to Shubuta

by


goingtoshubuta_small

The origin of this image is an ancestral memoir recounting a journey from Natchez, Miss. to Shubuta, Miss. in 1863.

“The party consisted of my Mother and myself, my uncle George N. Monette and my cousin Billy Phillips and my Negro nurse Emeline Netter. Although I was less than two years old at the time, I can recall as if yesterday little incidents of that journey, – the drive over rough country roads through the great forests of virgin long-leaf Pine which then covered that part of the State, the stopping at times to rest and eat lunch under the shade of the trees, and sometimes at farm houses in the “clearings,” – my uncle and cousin jumping from the wagon and walking up the long hills to ease the tired wagon mules, and at last the meeting with my dear Father at the little town of Shubuta.”

Related Images:

Capsize

by

12″ x 16″

inthewater_small

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Cherries

by

12″ x 16″

cherriesfromtheear_small

From this week’s Drawing the Myth and Daydream class.  Strangely also cherry-themed, like last week.  He seems enamored with her trick; I’m borderline distressed by it.

Related Images:

Presidio

by

5″ x 8″

presidio_small

Drawn from the Presidio theatre sign on Chestnut St. in San Francisco.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Talking With Bill Berkson in Front of an Ellsworth Kelly

by

5″ x 8″

withbillinfrontofellsworth_small

“You collaborate with your peers, either directly (that is, you write works together) or not (that is, by parallel creations you form the work that comes to be recognized as that of a period style, the art of your time). Competitiveness is a form of collaboration. Addressing an audience—conceiving an addressee, a reader or viewer, for the work—you collaborate with that shifting phantasmagoria. Such sociability is what puts the work in the world.” — Bill Berkson, from “Working with Joe,” 2002

It’s these broad definitions of collaboration that gives me hope. Sociability, generosity and conversation at the heart of art-making and art-viewing softens the sense that the Art-World is a fractured and self-important megalith. I had an uplifting morning with Bill Berkson at SFMOMA; this isn’t a great drawing necessarily but captures the conversation as I experienced it. And the Ellsworth Kelly room was elegant.

Related Images:

Washington Parting the Delaware

by

5″ x 8″
washingtonpartyingthedelaware_small

Washington helping out the pioneers by parting the Delaware; I think that’s how it went. But it may be the Mississippi, I think I see my grandparents’ house.

Related Images:

It Is As If It Is On An Ox

by

5″ x 8″

itisasifitisonanox_small

I tried to make a sentence with all two-letter words, but my need for good grammar prevented it. A pretty good ox though.

Related Images:

Mule Deer’s Pink Lady

by

16″ x 20″
muledeerspinklady_small

Oil paint is a mystical medium, it sings like nothing else. It is as radiant as it is uncooperative.

Related Images:

The Beards of the Ancients

by

5″ x 8″
beardsoftheancients_small

The beards of the ancients cannot grow on my chin. Something like that was written by Tao Chi (17th painter and poet during the late Ming Dynasty) to talk about unavoidable newness in painting, stylistically speaking.

Related Images:

Paul Klee

by

5″ x 8″

misterusesindirection_small

Mister uses indirection as a mode of inquiry. inquiry.

Related Images:

Filed Under: n/a

Live Oak II.

by

8 1/2″ x 9″
tree_02_small

(side note: this is the six hundredth piece on the Workaday page)

Related Images:

Garden District

by

6″ x 8″

gardendistrict_small

Wonderful new prismacolor pens, color squares, an airplane, and a group of us at a sidewalk cafe in the Garden District after my opening in New Orleans.

Related Images:

Draw a Scorpion

by

5″ x 5″

drawascorpion_small

In a book on the British painter Ken Kiff, the author refers to Art as a ‘species of Philosophy.’ I like this but wonder if there is more nuance. I think of what I do as a species of Philosophy, or sometimes a mutant relative of Linguistics, or sibling of literature. Seen from a certain angle, Painting could be considered a ‘species of Interior Design.’ Grouping like that helps me stay clear of the vortex of seeing one medium as in competition with another.

When I was in Glasgow, Painting was of no consequence, but Video Installation was of vital importance, now Social Practices (which could be seen as a ‘species of Activism’) is making Video Installation look like basket-weaving, and Painting is no longer a threat. Activism is seen as morally superior to intellectual pursuits now – not to mention the collecting of art objects – so Art that engages social issues and justice is at the top of the wheel for the moment. Will be interesting to watch the Art establishments domesticate Social Practices; reminds me of that quote from Octavio Paz: “More astute than Rome, the religion of art has absorbed all schisms.”

The above drawing: I made a note to myself and then did it, right there on the same page. Rare that happens in life.

Related Images:

Incredible Six-Legged Steer

by

8″ x 9″
sixleggedsteer_small

Before exit 70 on the interstate that runs the length of Kansas there is a series of signs tempting one to pull off and admire the “incredible six-legged steer.” I just came across some notes I had drawn while driving (I know) and worked them up into more developed drawings. Maybe interesting for those who follow the Wastrels saga on this page, clearly the genesis of the eight-leg deer . . .

The next few drawings are of related oddities of beast at the same exit.

Related Images:

Wastrels XCIII: I’m Not Asking You, You, I, and About the Middle of Your Heart

by

8″ x 10″

xciii_small

I do not want to close, and to worship, but you have my ears pierced. Sacrifices and sin offerings you will not, therefore, behold, I come from, we told him. The head of the book is about. I’m not asking you, you, I, and about the middle of your heart.

(this text is a mutation of Psalm 40:6-8, having translated the excerpt using Google Translate from English to Italian, Danish, Latin, Turkish, Bengali, Finnish, Hebrew and back to English)

Related Images:

Follow
Get every new post delivered to your inbox

Join other followers

Powered By WPFruits.com