Feb 18, 2010

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.
 

Feb 5, 2010

February 5, 2010 A Special Day

Today my father, William Arnold, would have celebrated his 88th birthday. Just hours before he made his transition, he wanted us to take pictures of all of us together, and he managed a big smile. This is my favorite image of that smile.
 
From my earliest memories he recorded the daily events of our lives with his Kodak. He bought one of the first Polaroids. I can still smell the chemicals and feel the magic of watching  the image magically appear on paper from just a few minutes earlier! Dad also recorded holidays and birthdays with his 35 mm movie camera.
 
He was a fastidious keeper of diaries, and always urged me to write down the day's events. He sent me his weekly entries right up until his last hospitalization. Each day was important, and each life significant.
 
Thanks to my father, I have a vast archive of imagery to draw upon for inspiration. He would be proud to see the hundreds of photos and pages of journal entries that I use in my drawings and paintings.