If you are a wanderer, drifting from place to place like me a sketchbook a few pens and colored pencils are handy to have with you. You will never know what would attract your attention as you sit and wait...
At restaurants and coffee shops we wait for our food and while waiting we start looking around at others, sketch them!
Obeserving people in the natural environment through sketching brings you closer to being there, the sound the smell and the tase later all become more apparent than they normally would be...its meditation in action.
To capture the ambiance of the place look for extraordinary objects displayed around the room or on the wall. This would identify the place for you and for those who happen to have been ther themselves and see your sketch. "I know where that Isss..."
Not every scene would be of interest to everyone but each person has some thing to relate to when a sketch catches the right feeling of the place, its the mind's eye that shares what even the artist fails to perceive.
If you live in a big city the laundrymat is the one place you spend allot of time at, some escape the tedious time of waiting with reading page to page word for word of the News paper, others chat the hours away and then there are a few who sketch the washer and dryers.
A Chinese restaurant on Irving in the Sunset District of SF where a yong Chinese girl sits at the counter watching TV or pretending to do her homework.
On one of the walls was a poster of A Diego Revierra painting maybe it was for his exhibition at the Museum.
Yes she's on the phone while watching TV wating for the next customer.
My friend David Carlson, a genius who has lived life no doubt and tasted as much as it could offer. I wonder what has become of him, last i heard he was in LA.
I met my wife Nancy while visiting David at 191 Haight Street where about nine people male and female shared a large Victorian House located on Haight and Octavia? A block from Page Street and two from Market Street.
Living at 191 after i moved in with Nancy was an unforgettable experience, it was like living in a Yuppy mental institution where everyone had an oppinion and about life and how to live but no one knew how to share it with love and compassion.
Livng at 191 was still one of the most rewarding expereince in my life as it helped me grow with a whole lot better understanding of who I was and who I can become.
Green Gulch Farm was the ultimate balance between living in the City and living well...on a farm! It was the sense of being anchored to the earth that kept me visiting this place over the years while living in SF.
The hours I spent digging and hoeing, piling layers of mulch one on top of another to build the compost piles in the fields was some of the most rewarding time that helped me mentally and pysically stay in tune with nature.
I have no idea what G>G> Farm would look like today,(June 2011) but I know this much, it was a place where I was able to do my soul's healing. I cannot claim of having found enlightenment there but I did find a meaning to life, I found my 'self'.
Sometimes i feel like i am just part of the weeds growing here and there sometimes noticed and most of the time trampled upon. Weeds are significant in Zen practice as they help to remind one of the endless influence of negative actions that we need to remove from our mind, we need to dp allot of weeding in our life.
I doubt that my wife nancy was ever more happier in her life than when she had my son Karim! I feel great that i could give her something to be very happy about after knowing her past painful experiences in relationships and with having babies.
Living close to G.G.Park in SF. was the greatest blessing for me as an artist,it was my greatest escape from the realities of the daily toils.
having children can be allot of fun and a whole lot more of pain but in the end it will always be a blessing for to have been a father than not to. Yes, Happy Father's Day to Me!
No comments:
Post a Comment