In This Garden

This drawing began as a quiet desire to capture some of the gestures of my family, moments I would have let go of, if not visited in drawn form. What began as simple drawings of my girls and their friends, studies in pencil and quick snapshots before they noticed me, moved to something more that I couldn't define at the time of it's becoming. I wanted to remember the beauty of those moments, their arm gestures, the way they curled together...and so I set out to make a drawing of the sounds of their conversation and of their silence.


Perhaps it's because I have two children in college now that I feel imminent loss, even with two children at home for several more years. The noise is less, the house is quieter. Am I supposed to feel relieved? I do not. I have loved every moment of this loud, sometimes wild environment and in moments, feel that world altering too quickly, feel myself swallowing gulps of air as if I can't breathe. My sister and I have spoken about this grieving, it's an ache somewhere unknown, in the deeper crevices of one's heart I suppose. I only know that drawing helps, that it clarifies my life's experiences, uncovering the hidden. It exposes wounds and heals, sometimes within the same mark.

I have a way of working that's intuitive. I don't begin with an in depth plan, but rather with open sketches, a beginning idea, and a willingness to move things.


I begin with large scale paper dolls, partially because this makes sense with the scale I frequently work.


When I move them around, I find the visual weights,


the pull of gestures,


the rhythm of bodies, and somewhere in there, meaning.


I don't know exactly where the critical eye and hand meet, where the heart and mind connect, but I feel it.


Drawing finds and pulls you into the space of a world that co-exists inside you even when you're unaware it exists.



So as I drew my family and we each found our positions in space, the drawing suggested itself. I moved my paper dolls around and played with collaged moments until the figures and textures settled together into close proximity, a garden of wild noise and filled space, with the shapes letting me know where next to go, how dark to deepen, where to lighten and leave,


and through this physical act of observing and revisiting, the drawing has the power to lead me to some inexplicable peace. There's a place in this garden to feel loss and gain, ... sadness and joy, together.