When you have a set of polar opposites, one at either end of a line, and you pick up that line as if it were a piece of string and bend it into a circle, you find that the opposites meet.
It's good to take a step back every once in awhile and look from a distance at the things that make you feel the most free. What if they all went away? Not one or two. All of them. Could you survive? Are you chained to them? What do you really need? And when that's gone too, then think again: What is it that you really need?
Now think about what makes you feel the most bound, the things that you most certainly feel have you wrapped in chains. If those things went away, would you be free? Really? Or would you need to find substitutes or a surrogates in order to move about freely and authentically?
There are no answers here, only questions. There are unique answers inside each of us, and that's where they are discovered.
There's a link on my sidebar to a gallery of some of my sketchbooks and journal pages. Most of what you'll find there are intensely layered and complex pages. I also do a lot of what I call graphic sketches like the one above, but I rarely post them anywhere.
I work in many different journals and sketchbooks simultaneously, and I never worry about finishing any of them. They'll finish themselves if they ever need closure. The visual journal pictured above goes with me most places. It's an altered ex-library book, a smallish discard, that I've mended and healed with masking tape, paint and paper. This book and a .05 Rapidograph are the only art supplies in my purse. Sometimes I'll haul other materials and sketchbooks with me, but that's another story. This is the only one that's always in my purse. I'll begin a prepared page when I'm on the road, and sometimes finish it while I'm out. If there's more on a page than black india ink, then it was finished in studio.
This particular sketch began with a thought. A puzzle to solve. I wanted to draw a linked chain, curling and curving, entirely in ink and entirely from memory. So I began with a link or two where the boy's back is now, then I continued. Most of the chain sat on these otherwise empty pages for a few weeks, until I decided that someone needed to be inside them. So I drew the boy, then more chain, then more boy. Somehow the ends of the chain decided to run off the page in opposite directions, and I wondered: Is he bound? Or is he free? Then the drawing became smaller and the question grew. That's just how it is sometimes.
This is day 5 of art journal pages in the new year. Challenging myself, along with a few hundred other artists, to Art Journal Every Day. Thanks Julie! So far, so good!
And now, not in any way connected with the rest of this post with the possible exception of the word "chain" in the title, you've got to hear this voice! If you have never heard Akiko Wada before, or maybe especially if you have, trust me, you'll want to hear this!
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