Lanouette 2001 Calendar Drawings
Begin Tour The 2001 Calendar Drawings is a self running presen-tation. A new drawing will appear each 12 seconds. To pause the presentation, click a drawing and view a larger version.		Matisse was asked, “Master how do you know a great picture when you see it?” He replied, “It is a simple matter. Look at a million pictures and you will know a great picture when you see it.” Drawing is the probe. It is the media that making mistakes is the right thing to do. It all happens so quickly that two wrongs can make a right. I found myself mired down by oil paintings about the terrors of the life I was living. Before the painting was finished those terrors had been overcome and I was stuck with an unfinished painting that had lost its purpose. At that time I dedicated my paintings to beauty and my drawings to everything else in life. Drawing is a constant. Doodling it is called by people who don’t see the importance of allowing their hands to open their hearts and their minds to chase a simple line that leads to...? When drawing the greatest tool is a good eraser or a fresh sheet of paper. Throw nothing away. Drawings have a way of getting beyond us. We are too critical at the beginning, too ready to accept our failure. That moment of creativity is the most tenuous and lost. Whatever comes from that should be put aside and considered later. On viewing older drawings one can see what one was not ready to accept. In a way our hands know more than we do. A simple black line slashed across a page. Look at it. It is a line. It is a cleaving of the white page. It is the balance and conflict of white and black that can become the art of drawing. In the 60’s I was struck with the power of the notion of drawing. Wire is drawn from steel. Swords are drawn from scabbards. The sun draws life from the earth. The earth draws life from the sun. To realize that all of this is drawing is to know the power of the simple act of living and the trail of that life that drawing is. As old as I am now. All the pages my hand has hovered over before committing to first stroke. I am still in awe of the energy and fear and triumph of beginning anew. Van Gogh drew each time as though he had never drawn before. Each foray into the page was new and fearless. The drawings show it. We often bore our selves with the weak and fearful attempts at breaking through the page. We lose interest and think we can’t draw. That is not right. All that we haven’t done is break through the page with our dreams. Be relentless not timid. Plenty of paper and drawing materials. Ink, pencils, brushes pens and reams of paper. Use it like it was free. Often it is and leads to a freedom that before the act of drawing was unimaginable. The first one or two strokes are mine. The rest belongs to the picture. Let the art draw you out of yourself. It is more than us and we can become more than us if we only allow ourselves to see. I drew as a child. It was my escape into something infinite. It was my escape from something finite and all too easily understood. It has continued. Drawing is the tension between black and white. What we can be is unknown. The simple, terrifying steps into that must be taken or the Universe will remained undiscovered and our lives will remain unlived. After a reunion at Silvermine College of Art and artist friend pointed out to our mentor Bob Gray that the people who were making excuses and not working back than were still making excuses. The people who were working back then were still working and not making excuses. He said, The people who were working back then were alive and they are still alive. And the others . . .