Pushing the Brush
Sent: 1/1/2017 5:19:33 AM

Reflecting On The Past

CHERRY TREE BUDDING OUT 10X13 PENCIL 1972

My mother so loved this drawing that I gave it to her. It hung in her library only coming back to me upon her passing. She thought it to be majestic.

Like many of us I become a bit reflective about past years when the new one is upon me. And within that old cliche, saying something about turning the page, I think about all the landmarks that have trickled out of the spout which has been my life's experience - contemplating them through countless meanderings of introspection.

At this time my cultural heritage suggests I'm supposed to revolutionize some aspects of my life by way of making New Year's Resolutions. Thus making me a better person through their fruition. This is always about two things. Giving up something or embracing something. And so from now on I'm going to or not going to, blah, blah, and blah. For me this is a wholly nonsensical tradition. I don't think I have ever accomplished a cold turkey anything. Real change for the better in my life has always been preceded by lots of screwing up and for the most part it's been a drawn out evolution of trials and tribulations, blah, blah, and blah aside. It's been my experience too, that in the realm of personal change one essential constant seems to be required - it needs to permeate all else - and that is my undivided attention. Huge concept, undivided attention! My daily life divides me into so many parts that I often find myself in that pitching or catching conundrum. Separating me from my heart's desired pursuit - bullying me around under the lash of responsibilities. That, life got in the way thing.

Through Facebook, this past year, I've hooked up with some old friends I haven't seen in decades. Boy some reflecting there I'll tell you. They see that the majority of my Facebook posts revolve around the painting that I've been doing. A number of them have told me that they still have some piece of art work that I did eons ago and they have sent me pictures of them hanging in their homes. Frankly I've been taken aback at seeing them. Not because they are all that good or that someone has held onto them all this time but because when I look at them anew they appear to be honest to me. Then the lament begins. Where would my painting be today had I not put down the brush some forty plus years ago because life got in the way?

I'm showing a number of them here recently reunited with my eyes through social media and two that I have held onto all these years myself because their embodiment is so endearing to me.

Margaret's Barn Pencil 1975

My old friend John Bean, made a present to his sister Margaret, of this plein air pencil drawing I did in 1975. She sent along a picture of it to me still hanging on her dinning room wall. I remember at the time I drew this thinking it was odd that a farmer would fence his pond off from his livestock. I also remember now that it was a frequent habit of mine to put birds flying in my landscape drawings back then.

Rodney's Drawing Charcoal 1976

Just last week my old friend Rodney Green, sent this picture to me in a Facebook post. A plein air charcoal drawing done in 1976. There was a period of time when I used both sienna and black charcoal pencils for my outdoor drawings. I would sand the pencils to load the paper with a dusting of powder using a stippling brush to impregnate the tone into the paper. Then with erasers I would work back to the white base. This would evoke quite a mood as you can see. I remember that this old place was off of Hacker Road in Howell, Michigan and coincidentally not very far from where my art teacher Heiner Hertling currently lives. At this time I was renting an old farmhouse nearby with my brother and a carpenter friend who was restoring the steeple on the old Catholic church at the corner of Hacker and M-59 right around the time I drew this. Talk about memories.

Jim Stevens's Childhood Home. Pencil 1978

There's a story here. I use to work with an old Hillbilly from Tennessee named Jim Stevens. Among so many other things, he taught me how to make cornpone he called it, which was basically corn bread in a cast iron skillet. I'll never forget that. One day his wife Arvazine, also from the hills, showed me an old wrinkled up black and white photograph of his childhood home and asked me to make a pencil drawing of it for his birthday present. I made two because I didn't like the way this first one turned out. Jim told me when he was a boy living in this old log cabin it was his job to go to the creek every morning and draw the day's water for the family. He did this two buckets at a time, five times and barefooted, every day for years. He told me in the hottest part of the summer that the water from this creek was so cold it would hurt your teeth to drink it. He also told me the best present he ever got was when his father brought him home his own mule. Can you imagine? Anyway somewhere along the way I sold this lesser one to Doc. Dudley. Years later, at Doc. Dudley's estate sale my old friend John Bean bought this in the auction and I recently was able to get a picture of it. Notice the birds in the sky again.

Rembrandt's Bed Pencil 1978

The drawing at the top of this article and this one are two of very few drawings I've kept for myself over the years because they resonate such a chord in me.

I copied this drawing from a book on Rembrandt which I had borrowed from the library. It had lots of his pencil drawings in it and I copied dozens of those for the purpose of learning how to draw more succinctly, like he did. They are copied the world over by art students for the same purpose.

This is one of the beds he slept in located near a fireplace in the workshop of his studio in Amsterdam. There is such an inviting and cozy feeling about this little wall bed to me that I've always kept it on either my bedroom night stand or dresser ever since I copied it.

Today I have come to realize that all the twists and turns of life getting in the way weren't really derailing the improvement of my art work at all. Actually it's all been resource materials coming into the mix. Those ins and outs are part and parcel of a pertinent reality here, the common denominator - art - is indivisible in me. Only the mediums I have pursed have changed, and there have been dozens of these. Moreover, I have been faithfully persistent with my art work. It's doing is as essential an element to the sustenance of my life as breathing is. Sure I could have been a much better painter today had I continued on with it back then - but I didn't - it doesn't matter why. I started building copper lanterns then beautiful ships in bottles, on and on, was always something and I was fully invested in the fine art of it. The good news is that between then and now I have created so many other pieces of accomplished art with as much merit as any drawing or painting that I have ever done. There's nothing really to lament. Where do I go from here? I'm already doing it. I'm painting again and with as much undivided attention as life will let me. It's all good. I don't have to change a thing this year. Phew!! What a relief.

I hope you have enjoyed my first monthly Pushing The Brush article of the new year and would like to hear your opinion of it. Please share it with your friends if you think they may find it interesting, too.

I'm sure we all will see many changes in 2017, some intentional, some not so much. I'm planning on creating all sorts of emblematic visualizations of things that are beautiful in my eyes. How about you?

As always, thank you for your time.

With appreciation, Bruce Foxworthy.