On Lost Love



Last week I visited a solo exhibit of Mark Hoppmann's artist books called "The Garden of Earthly Delights." The Collins Library in Tacoma hosted the show; it was focused on Hoppmann's sketchbooks, most of them filled with intricate sketches of organic forms, some natural, some more imaginative. The sketches were thoughtful, meditative, luminous, and I was impressed with the craftsmanship of the books themselves.

I wasn't expecting the strength of my reaction, though. Standing there in front of an antique glass case filled with drawings, my heart went out toward them in an almost spiritual gesture, a yearning, a sharp, bittersweet sense that somehow encompassed loss, nostalgia, envy, and love all at the same time. It was that thing we feel when time and place and circumstance converge and we stumble across something we're very deeply missing.

What is this? I wondered. Where the hell is this coming from?

Then it hit me: I don't draw anymore.

Sure, I put pencil and pen to paper. I do thumbnails, I sketch underpaintings, I lay out designs for linoleum blocks, I render. But it's only a means to some other end. Drawing for its own sake? Drawing for pleasure? I can't remember how long it's been.

If a person decides to make a life in the arts, she has to cultivate the ability to develop independent projects and to work in reasonably disciplined way. Ideation, design, organization, and implementation are equally necessary, as necessary for artists as anyone else. But sometimes it feels like that's all there is. Like all that's left is following procedure, making the next piece in the series, checking the deadlines...filling the forms with a sort of hollow dedication.

Looking at Mark Hoppmann's perfect small sketches, each with its love of drawing shining right through...

...well now. This is a thing.

I guess it's possible to get so focused on working toward finished work, toward series and coherent ideas that you can just lose the thread. But how do you find it again? Is it just misplaced? Has it slunk off to hide somewhere, maybe behind the couch with all the cat hair? Is it possible to schedule in thread-finding time?

"From 2 to 3:30 every other Wednesday: pick up lost love of carefree drawing for its own sake"

"Contemplate sensuality and spirituality of process, preferably before breakfast each weekday before work"

It's possible I'm a little too cynical for this approach to have any benefit. Jollying myself along with affirmations and the like has never really resulted in anything other than a sharp increase in internal smart-assery. But love is love. I can see it there. I know I had it, and still have it sometimes...tree bark.

Yeah, tree bark.

Every so often in the past few years, I've sneaked off into the woods and drawn the trunks of trees. Not with any brilliant sense of composition or style or whatever; I just find an interesting tree and draw it, particularly the bark. It hasn't happened often, but it has happened, and I think I was closest to this missing thing then.

Maybe I'll sneak off again in the next few weeks and see what happens....


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For more about the show and sketchbooks, here's a link to Mark Hoppmann's website. 












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