A Year of Making Art: Day 49

June 7, 2007  Day 49

Adrian left this morning without a word and without breakfast.  Then I remembered that Thursdays are Compos Mentis days, when he volunteers at the farm in the morning.  I heard from Carole Stone, the director of the program, that all the ladies there like him.  Typically during the week, the volunteers are women.

At breakfast I was reading this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine, and saw a short piece about Damien Hirst's latest artwork:  a skull encrusted in diamonds.  After watching the movie, Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio about the diamonds mined in West Africa to finance terrorism, the skull as repository for diamonds seemed apt.  Riches  have always been associated with death, but now the connection is literal as well as metaphorical.

Art, I think, is also fascinated with death.  It is a song of death or life, and the circle that connects them.  As I move closer to the degree of death on this circumference, I can almost imagine that life and death are one. 

This morning when I faced the blank drawing pad, I could not bear the silence.  Judy Carmchael's jazz rhythms helped me to begin, and I was able to find the looseness that I always seek.

  Drawing #49, 14" x 11"

(Note:  There is a gap between the dates I'm writing and posting because I had to give myself time to get ahead in case we travel and I'm not able to post.)