Self Portrait from Birthday Number Thirty

I took the photo for this drawing on my 30th birthday, two weeks before my son was born. I looked at the sink and countertop as a kind of metaphor for my life. At the time we didn't have a dishwasher in our kitchen and the sink was constantly filling with dishes, and it seemed like no matter how many dishes we cleaned there were always more.  This captured my wife and I because we had met and tied the knot, moved and had a baby in such rapid succession that it seemed like we couldn't catch up with our lives.  I also like the idea of my attributes being personified by the objects that I own and use, and the idea of illustrating a human presence without a human form.  I made the drawing with graphite and white colored pencil on toned paper, which is the same medium I used for my other drawing that illustrates human presence without form, "Mine Eyes are Homes of Silent Prayer".  I love creating drawings because I really get to push the relationship of flatness and form in a way that I wouldn't feel comfortable with in a painting.  Anyway, here is an example of my newest drawing "Self Portrait from Birthday Number Thirty", which I completed right on the cusp of birthday number thirty three.

 "Self Portrait from Birthday Number Thirty"

graphite and white colored pencil on toned paper

22" x 29"

2017

"Mine Eyes Are Homes of Silent Prayer"

graphite and white colored pencil on toned paper

22" x 27"

2014