On not drawing for a year

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
- Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
(sec. 16)Lifted from Giga Quotes

I remember a friend used to write that she would likely become physically ill if she stopped working. I did live through 3 bouts of food poisoning, but on recovering from each session I was clear eyed and ready to live through anything else but the dread of the studio.

It took me about 4 hours to remember something about drawing - something about my drawing. I'm not sure that's the best example of it, but it does come back. One remembers in some physical way the way one remembers doing hard labor... pushing an image through till - when one squints - one can see what one was seeking.

And then I remember that it has to be well-lubricated and almost automatic - just the slightest idea of control and the very serious threat of official power. Official power should be draped in legitimacy, less human and more angelic - more amorphous.

After a year - I remembered that not drawing for a year was just a year listening. That cities are forests and forests are congregations and all congregations are where power meets up to decide if power should continue - or should it simply dissipate.

Party Monster

These days, when asked at dinner parties in New York what kind of paintings I do, I hesitate knowing that somehow God will slip into the conversation and I will never be asked back.

- Marshall Arisman interviewed by Vickie Karp at Huffington.

There's a scene in Party Monster where the venerable James St. James is asked just who were the Club Kids. He nostaligically remembers the period in Manhattan in the aftermath of the death of Andy Warhol when a vacuum opened up in the NYC nightlife and the kids all swarmed in to fill it.

It's a vacuum we're still contending with. Perhaps I am not paraphrasing the scene exactly accurately. I won't be watching the movie again. But maybe the "publicity for publicity's sake" attitude is on it's last legs. The Marshall Arisman illustration is yanked with thanks and gratitude from DetroitArts.