A Ten Finger Tune

What holds me physically captive in the act of drawing is the way in which my brain seems to be signaling each of my fingers individually as well as together. Each moves in concert like a brush, only to then pounce on the page in counterpoint or in an emphatic underlying tenor. Sometimes the materials are pushed, spread lushly, sometimes clawed, scratched, plucked. From the right, from the left, fingers from either hand reach into the drawing to leave a hard mark or to softly echo a mark. Every nerve seems to be vibrating.

And what subject is served by such quick but fleeting attention? Movement, passage, gesture. So the fluidity of ink, the glide of charcoal, the skim of chalk all reverberate with the physicality of the shifting view. Skaters, skiers, dancers, swimmers, boaters, they all partake in the action seen quickly, barely seen, seen best with eyes closed and the other senses creating the mind's image.

Surely this impulse to focus on what is visibly a blur has some social root. Some fundamental belief that in holding the light, uncomplicated, pleasurable diversion, we can hold the counterpoint to the dark, intractable forces of power and control. The material and the meaning seem to read in either direction, like a palindrome.  Like the ten fingers on my hands.