Just Beginning

Because I'm never sure whether a work I've started will survive through to its successful completion, It's not usually been my habit to share in-progress artwork with others. Though, especially if it's clear the work will take a long time, I have been known to let my excitement to show off overcome any worries of incompletion.

So, yes indeed, I've started another drawing...and this one feels like it's going to take forever! I'm continuing to indulge my recent penchant for astronomical themes, and the subject I've chosen (which I may divulge at a later date), allows for a good deal of creative license. The exciting (and most challenging) thing about this project is that as I began planning it out, I couldn't seem to fit it properly to a single sheet of even the biggest paper I have. Instead, I decided to spread it over three panels. They're not quite as big as the ones pictured here, but in the end, should be at least a little more, well, detailed?

**just a side note: yes, I do think the above three canvases (housed in Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou) constitute a legitimate piece of art. Much as John Cage's infamous "4:33" redefined our concept of "music" and "silence" (there's a great article about this here), these blank canvases set up conditions inviting us to re-imagine how we frame our visual experience, and to consider again that pesky little question that never seems to go away: "what is art?" It took me a long time to appreciate this myself. The first time I went to the Guggenheim in New York and saw similar conceptual and minimalistic works, I was completely aghast. I felt that stuff like this was just thrown together by a bunch of lazy con-artists who were laughing their way into the art-history books. Over time, however, various experiences led me, almost without thinking, to reconsider that initial response, and somewhere along the line I was surprised to hear myself even defending (or in the very least, reserving hasty judgement of), similarly thought-provoking works. Feel free to disagree with me here. I understand why many eyes roll over such pieces (and don't worry, I won't be producing a blank-canvas series any time soon...it's not quite the style through which I best communicate), but you might be surprised what a second glance and a second thought might spark... 

Anyway, here's a snippet of what I worked on yesterday...

I don't have any idea how long the whole piece will take to finish, but I'll likely post more teasers as I make progress.