As we said goodbye to London, I put together some of my mental “snapshots” into this:
We will miss the thrill of the Big City, the different flavors of the neighborhoods, the people we got to know. Thanks to everyone who helped us have such a marvelous couple of months! Here are a few of my London sketches that didn’t get posted in the rush of heading to Botswana:
I have been closely examining my impressions from these last few months, in terms of art specifically, and in terms of life, the universe, and everything. (Have I left anything out?)
The art I have studied has been humbling, overwhelming, and inspiring. More than once I was sure my head and my heart would explode. The Victoria and Albert was my favorite museum, and I barely scratched the surface there.
The art I have made has been exhilarating, satisfying, and I remain very humble. More than once I considered investing in companies that make erasers.
Sketching in the many places we have explored, I gained an appreciation of the value of the classical Western methods of learning art – here is the technique, here is the masterpiece, look, draw, repeat, look, draw, repeat. Just like a young athlete repeats the critical motions over and over, until muscle memory takes over, then begins to experiment with variations, tweaks, and subtleties, so a middle age artist repeats and experiments. Some of the motions are already second nature, and some of those must even be unlearned. But the exhilaration of learning is almost enough in and of itself. The going is as good as the getting there. The joy is in the process. I haven’t been able to post many sketches recently, but for every one I’ve posted I have a dozen others that I like and two that I don’t like and one I have jettisoned. Here are a few more.