Artist Statement and a Brief History

I have been drawing portraits for more than 3 decades now. I would like to think I've evolved, but my methods remain intact. While I still work from photographs and still use pencils, my arsenal has accumulated more than 130 colors to defend all shades between black and white. Every pencil is a brush of its own that can be flattened or sharpened for deployment.  I welcome all favorite photos for rendition, but I ask for a selection that offers some perspective of subject or subjects before I engage. Precise reproduction is a mechanical exercise today, with all kinds of tools available. But it finds me somewhat short of passion. I have little use for technology in my element, as I push my pencils without it. Perhaps that makes me a dinosaur, destined for extinction. But I will keep drawing till the ELE (extinction level event)

As a matter of procedure, pencil painting does not allow for mistakes that can be corrected with added layers of paint. It asks instead for a disciplined method. While most shades from black to white can be spread with subtle blend, color once deployed is not a stamp that can be un-licked. Indeed it defines the very nature of pencil versus paint that keeps my hand alert. Cold press illustration board does not forgive erroneous placement of color, nor the impulsive impatient hand. I perhaps devote more time than my contemporaries to that patience, but that is why I don't charge by the hour.

Frank Lloyd Wright perhaps said it best… "less is more". But the challenge is not just knowing when to quit. It is also knowing when not to. I have come to accept, however, that there is no such thing as "knowing". There is only passion unpolluted, left to drive the artists' hand… alongside the beholder whose eye he begs to catch. I have never been without pencils, whether for portraits or design, but my carpentry tools are gathering dust. It's time to get down to art business.
  
My uncle once asked his father (my grandfather who was a lawyer) when he was going to quit practicing law and get down to business? He is the same uncle who, when scolded for eating a cookie the dog had been licking, insisted that he turned it over and ate the other side. He grew up to practice psychiatry.
 
My father practiced architecture until he retired and sold his practice…to a guy who I think is still practicing.  We shared a passion for space design, my dad and I . But he was much better equipped than I for page after page of detailed graphic explanation that leaves no room for interpretation. Residential design is something I still pursue and enjoy. But it puts limits on the unfunded imagination. And as age sneaks up the flanks of Mount Comfy, my drawing arm looks more and more attractive. No really, you should see it!  It's awesome!

Copyright Mark Stegner 2008

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