Welcome to the Glutton’s home. His home is very large just like his appetite. You should know that he will try to eat you too. Now that would be something to see! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
The sleepy bell ringer
With the pandemic scrambling our internal calendars and clocks, we’ve come to rely on those shared community timekeepers to keep us on track. But it’s the weekend and the bell ringer is taking the day off. Don’t worry, things have a way of working out.
Borders
Lately, I’ve added borders to a few drawings. How exciting!
Crystal Cities: November-December
Crystal Cities are my go-to doodle strategy. Here is a smattering of some ornate ones from the past two months. I’ve been busy compiling these and others in two new self-published catalogs.
Crystal Cities 2019 By Rob Dunlavey (Published 12/2/2021 Paperback) USD25.00
Crystal Cities: 2018 By Rob Dunlavey (Published 11/10/2021 Paperback) USD25.00
2022 calendar poster for sale
Amazingly, my 2022 calendar poster is available with plenty of time left in 2021. I have not delayed and neither should you. Order one (or several) now. 18 x 24" , shipped flat & folded or rolled in a tube. Please indicate with your order; prices vary. Get it at Etsy
Is Anyone Home?
Think of the resources marshalled to connect this castle with the distant shore: architects, masons, stone cutters and marine engineers. They built caissons and cofferdams and stationed barges with primitive cranes to hoist and position the carefully carved blocks. Did they have any idea how sublime the rising sun would look on this day? Reflect on the mind of a seagull: the sublime is the humdrum to them.
The Wrestlers
From sunup to sundown the wrestlers wrestle. They wedge themselves into their cramped corners and defend themselves with tenacious holds. It seems that the small building itself is what keeps them from realizing victory and throwing their opponent to the floor. They grunt, growl and sweat day in and out. The birds come and go. They can’t figure it out: why do they fight?
Bleak Birdy Business
I try to work quickly with my very limited imaginative and artistic resources. My process: 1. Deface the white paper with some color of some sort (pastels, watercolor, etc.) 2. Add birds or something to animate the scene. 3. Stand back and accept whatever comes out. 4. Don’t fuss and then move on.
Between Heaven and Hell
Prometheus or Pieta
Falling Birds
Sea Urchins
When traveling, I leave my paints at home and use colored pencils more. As usual, I was up early, this time in Brunswick, Maine at my mother-in-law’s. After brewing coffee for everyone, I settle in her favorite chair and look out the windows to her well-designed garden. And then the doodling begins.
Praying Mantis & Fruit Flies
A scrap of art paper glued down suggested a fruit bowl filled with overripe persimmons. The mantis is vexed by the cloud of swarming fruit flies. She prefers purity.
(collage, watercolor, ink)
Some examples of 19th and 20th century Mingei style wares below.
Musical Grids
It just occurred to me, the connection between a general fascination with utility poles and the criss-crossing grid of wires and thingamajigs and some abstract grids I’ve been drawing lately. I’m so glad that mystery is solved!
Feeding the birds
More Squirrels
I refuse to let squirrels push me around!
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Bird Brain
The world is filled with empty spaces. As you repeatedly divide space from the macro to the micro, the more uninhabited it becomes. Eventually, we are left with a vast infinity between atomic particles. We are more not-here than we are here.
A blank sheet of paper presents similar questions. It represents 100% possibility of containing everything known in the universe of human comprehension. A crayon mark or drop of pigment on the paper is like the initial milliseconds of the Big Bang. A flag has been planted into Chaos. Space has been addressed and a strategy will emerge and grow as the chaos slowly takes on a recognizable form. More drops and washes of color are added. Loose grid lines and organic forms further define (or limit) the universe that is forming.
And so it goes, this tension between abstraction and a representation of reality, until in my case usually, a reality forms. There is Up. There is Down. I see a Horizon and Depth. I see Light and Shadow. How predictable! But then I run from this predicament and add a bird, a figure that represents consciousness and a sense of history and even culture. This is the bird brain: an intersection of Mind and Mindlessness.
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Bewildered Squirrels
Overnight, in the blink of an eye all the trees have been cut down, fires have come and the animals have fled. In the aftermath, squirrels return, disbelieving and bewildered. “Where is our home? Where will we sleep tonight? Shame on you!”
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Blue and Yellow
Blue and Yellow is an attractive color combination for me …and I don’t have a drop of Swedish blood in me. This color scheme is always fresh and balanced even when the core hues veer to an impure fringe. It suggests open vistas and the basic color experience of a day at the beach.
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Odds and Ends
I guess you could say that there are three basic efforts in my current art practice. They look quite different to most viewers. Maybe it looks as if three different artists share my name and life:
1. working on children’s picture books to be published (my day job)
2. a daily practice of nature drawings of birds and landscapes (my in-between job)
3. imaginative doodles and paintings in sketchbooks (my wee hours of the night/early morning job)
I ask for your indulgence: It’s this third category I want to talk about. Lately, it’s become difficult to sustain in an energetic way because the cats interrupt my process. It’s 6:00 a.m. and they plaintively meow at the door. I’m afraid they’ll wake up the sleeping house so I let them in. And pretty soon, I’ve relinquished my rocking chair and watercolors to them and I go check email across the room. oon it’s time to go outside and draw the ducks (my other job).
The end result, right now, is a meandering knowledge of the importance of this pre-feline art-making. But I have a less precise sense of the direction it’s going in or why it goes at all. However, I do feel that these warm-up exercises are important. Significant insights and ideas have emerged in the past and I assume will in the future. Until then, we have odds and ends.
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Snakes in a Pen
Some snakes emerged from my dip pen this week. I think it’s worth knowing that the paper I’m drawing on is not traditional and it effects the types of lines I’m able to draw. And this affects what comes out of the pen.
So, this paper: when I order ink for my printer they always tuck in free sample packs of photo printing paper. It’s very glossy on one side and it curls up slightly. I draw on this glossy side. The crow quill nib catches or skips or moves unequally across this artificially smooth surface. It’s just a thing, not a big thing. But it does have an effect on what happens when the impulses travel between my head and my hand. Sometimes this is the most important and revelatory part of making art: the plumbing between the mind and the material.
Poor snake, he seems to be stuck on the telephone wires…
06-07-11a: a very colorful snake from 2011
06-14-11a: Making a new friend…
07-05-13a: Eve and the serpent sharing an apple
Hunting Owl
Be alert! Before the day begins or as the sun is setting, crepuscular hunters dart from the shadows hoping to find a sleepy mouse.
02-12-21a: The sun is setting and the owl sets out to hunt.
This is one very angry bird!
Does Nature Have Feelings?
01-26-21b (mixed media)
Why is this bird angry? It’s angry because humankind has selfishly despoiled the Earth leaving other animals and plants without the resources they need to have viable life. Imagine walking down the street minding your own business and the squirrels and robins start to call you names and argue with you. They shout and tell you to go back to where you came from. They are disgusted with you and your species’ selfish behaviors. Imagine being called out as an entire species! Who might we negotiate with if we wanted to seek compromise and mend our ways?
But Nature appears to not have feelings. Life forms quietly become move anywhere might sustain them or go extinct. They don’t protest. They don’t make us feel guilty. Humankind doesn’t get a summons in the mailbox to appear at some tribunal. No. We just find ourselves slowly and slowly more alone in the world with this gnawing fear that life is out of balance.
Maybe we can begin by listening to the people who listen to Nature: the naturalists and biologists, the artists and scientists. Maybe we can start to listen better with our ears, eyes and hearts. And then we will scale back our ways.