Sexy Guy, Shells, and A Window

What does sexy guy have to do with my drawing yesterday? More than you would think. Look at that pen amid all that masculine skin. The precision on the nib , the metallic preciseness, the point, makes all that skin and naturalness even more so. It's the contrast. And it works in reverse. The skin surround makes the precision more precise.

I am a trained Zone System photographer, in part because of the guy who sent me this photo. Oh, no that's not him, but it could be, even now with the inevitable intrusion of grey hair here and there. (The photo is from Flickr taken by Phil h) Well, yum to the photograph, but even more yum to the conversation we were having on the phone. We were talking about access points, personal and professional. And as he is ever so able to do, he nailed it. Not the specifics necessarily, but the point. That is why he was always paid the big bucks, I guess. But more why I always loved HIS photographs. Still do.

Anyway, he said to me at one point, "Janice, it is just a portal." He encouraged me to go back to the very basics. So I did. I started thinking in black and white and more about that pen... and windows... he reminded me of my love for black and white photographs; I could not get enough of them over the weekend... light and dark, textures, contrasts, reflections...so yesterday as I sketched and conceptualized a couple of new paintings, I was again looking, for that access point, focused on a feeling, the time of day. There in the photo on the right was a portal on the base camp from our bunks. And in the light...all the Diebenkorn excitement one could want... a window upon my island.

It's a small thing maybe. Something easily overlooked, but it has everything to do with that spot where man meets nature. Some precision, some very specific textural clues, can speak volumes in a story. Just like in that photograph, in those shells, and now in that window captured by the light. This is what my muse wanted me to see yesterday in that puzzle solving quest.

Thanks, media man.

Do you sometimes have a muse come from unexpected places? Don't you love it when that happens?