Maybe the concept of drawing that is not art
holds special appeal for me because when I first realized that I wanted to be an artist, when I was a teen, I found drawing so difficult. It should be noted that some painters never draw, and that drawing isn’t really essential to painting since the drawing of an image can be subsumed into the process of painting. But I wanted to draw. It was a puzzle too because sometimes I could draw and sometimes I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand why it should turn on and off, but it did. Now I have some ideas about why it can turn on and off and even now — after let’s not mention how many decades of drawing — my ability to draw still turns on and off sometimes. The difference now is that when it turns “off” I just continue along knowing that it will turn “on” again shortly.
However, the problem of drawing persists in my mind and thoughts about the solutions to the problem also persist because I had so much anguish in early days. Moreover in finding out that the solution is to simply continue along, I learned over time to appreciate the gains of drawing particularly on those occasions when drawing seemed to be going badly. And I learned to love the immersion into visual perception. I have come to love the stenography of drawing, the use of a drawing tool as biofeedback for those occasions when I simply look at a thing and think about aspects of its appearance.
Having the pen in my hand cements something in the thoughts. It uses more of the body. It connects me more to the sensation than if I were only looking. In neurological terms it invokes neuroplasticity. I am drawing on the paper, but I am also drawing something on my mind’s surface too.
Art is associated with an image that ultimately gets presented to a public. Art is a cultural thing. Art is something we do for our neighbors — on some level. Maybe Vermeer was an extreme introvert (who can really know?) but his art came to enjoy rock star status in our era. I doubt Vermeer could have ever imagined its having such powerfully broad appeal across time and cultures. How could Vermeer imagine anything about our world? Okay, so that’s an extreme example. Putting a picture in a local exhibition or offering it for sale in an art gallery are also ways that it becomes “art” for the participation of lots of other people outside the artist’s narrow orbit.
But as fine a thing as art is, I also cherish privacy and the value of ideas that are not comprehensible. I involve myself in an irony by declaring the privacy of some of my drawings while writing a post on the Internet! It’s just that I know other people do these things too, and my point is to say, “Hey. This is marvelous.” You cannot know what I experienced as I display my incomprehensible, scribbly bits of visual biofeedback. But I’m telling you this is wonderful stuff. And for a music lover, even the sound of a musician practicing scales can be thrilling. The sound of the instrument. These episodes are like that.
I am justly proud of the beauty of the line produced by the pen. Can you see how amazingly lovely some of this is? Bic Cristal deserves perhaps most of the praise, but I get some too for the use of the tool. And dime store pencils on cheap paper, and other tools used with devil-may-care freedom offer delights.
Because I’m telling you — that while I was looking at these things, the objects on the still life table that I’ve drawn and redrawn a gazillion times, which I never find boring (I suppose these are some of my scales and arpeggios) or the really confused visually wandering thoughts about the plant and architectural forms that I see from the back door of my house, and thoughts about things seen in the dark, or the birds that flew past my head, the leaves of grass on the ground — I can scribble the thoughts of these things and the drawing has probably no verisimilitude AT ALL. But I know what I felt. I will own the memory of this moment more strongly for having used the drawing tool.
Someday it may even work its way into my art also.
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 
Nice post, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have often felt that each thought, emotion and experience gets pressed into our life to make a unique tapestry that we present to the world. Perhaps making some form of art is a way of showing the INNER tapestry of the mind and heart. I love your phrase about drawing on the inner surface of the mind. Really interesting drawings also.