February 18, 2010: Power Lines

February 18, 2010: Power Lines   For well over a year, I've had a drawing idea in the queue, waiting for its turn to become one of my colored pencil drawings. This week I began working on my concept.   It seemed so ordinary, just a reference shot looking down the railroad tracks, taken after a freight train had passed through a nearby crossing. But something about the distant power lines etched and stretched across the opaque February sky kept calling to me. Perhaps it was the memory of the power lines that cut through our family farm in Central New York.    In the distance is a collection of all sorts of power line towers and poles, some wooden, others metal. Each has a different configuration, forming an intricate tracery of scaffolding connecting earth to sky. I love the way the cables cross the sky, carrying stored power of invisible sky sentences on delicately lined writing paper.   The train is far down the tracks now. Everything is still and desolate on this bleak winter day, yet somehow vivid with implication.  I am reminded of a high school speech teacher who demonstrated how a whisper can have more impact than a shout.