Drawing 27th January 2023
Ballpoint Pen on Lokta Paper
12 x 12 in
This is an ongoing body of work I call 'States of Being'.
It must be more then a decade since I have started this work. I will have to find the first drawing I ever called states of Being and shared it. But I realized over time that every elaborate or quick sketch, whether on a napkin from a restaurant or such as in this case on beautiful paper from the Lokta bush of the Himalayan Mountains, would reflect the state of my being. In the the perspective, the dimensionality, the structure of the ever emerging formations of rocks, rivers, mountains and elements of the sky, taking up different shapes and forms, points of view, for me signifying a state of my soul, my mood, my emotions, my mind.
While each image is imagined it also informs of my devotion to Nature and my continuous study of it. The source of energy and nurture for all of our existence. Pacha Mama, Mother Earth.
I personally also feel an affinity to water. the different States through which it travels and the information it gathers on its way. Cycling through life, like we do ourselves, with time over space, carrying more and more experiences, encounters with landscapes it passes, ecologies through which and within it travels, to transform again and again through different states.
From Rain or mountain springs, like veins nurturing underground pathways, creeks, filling gushing streams, meandering rivers, to gather in the beds of the earth, the oceans, to through wind and sun, travel in rippling or roaring waves to different shores, evaporating under the warming rays into the sky again, to bathe nature into new life, with its showers of information, awakening or maintaining the cycle of living.
We ourselves cycle through stages of our lives in different states. States of Being has become for me a discovery of how imagery reflects the state of my spirit. Narrow gorges, seemingly endless rapids, give way to wider canyons, distant rock formations, and meandering peaceful waterfalls. Beyond the composition, the demeanor of the drawing tool used, and resulting mark making speak to the tranquility, restlessness or unease I might have felt during the period in which the drawing was created.
But as always the act of creating, giving myself the permission to just be, to breathe, not focused on knowing but just arriving in the moment, to see and trust the image to emerge over time. Sometime these drawings also emerge to pass time, but they foster an inner peace, a calmer presence and larger perspective of life within me. Initially art making is a way of coming to terms with simply feeling and observing.