I take walks and pass the same scenes and never tire of looking at an interesting place.

It could be that I’m an exceedingly lazy person, but I don’t think so.  Not that I don’t think I’m a lazy person.  I do.  But I don’t think that’s the cause of this phenomenon:  that I walk all over the park and find that it has many beautiful views, and yet  find myself only wanting to draw the same motif again and again. 

Each of these drawings looks very different to me.  It could be that I cannot draw.  But it’s not that I think I cannot draw.  I can draw.  It’s just that the formal garden has so many facets to its vegetative personality.

And this one above I drew from memory.  It is more vague than the others.  Not that my memory is any more vague than anyone elses.  It’s just that memory is by nature hazy and thus creative — making of the same scene, many scenes.

And this version above I drew in a notebook, and that’s why it looks curved in the photo.  I’m not saying I couldn’t have straightened out the curve.  No, I’m telling you that a team of fifty crack photographers couldn’t have gotten this darned uncooperative notebook to stop folding shut everytime I tried to take the picture …. (Sorry, a little off topic.)

And this last one, I can’t tell you what it’s story is.  In the blur of versions I’ve completely forgotten what circumstances surround the making of this drawing.  I’m not saying that I’m forgetful, I’m just saying ….

I need to make some more variations.

Advertisement

4 thoughts on “Variations on a theme

  1. what are you saying exactly Aletha – hahaha! It’s good to see the same view again (that fourth picture is particularly familiar – the conifer) – like old friends popping up again.

  2. Perception is such a changeable thing – one minute we’re looking at “A”, the next we’re seeing “B and C” – and the next thing we know parts shimmer and sparkle and reappear, all vying for attention.

    Your drawings continue to be wonderful; they just crackle with life.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s