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  On
October 30, 2011, I meandered into my studio, tore a sheet out of a sketchbook
and taped it to my drawing board. I reached for a stick of graphite and a
PinkPearl eraser, not knowing why or what, and my hand began to draw. After an
intense year working on my latest series of Reflected-Light paintings, with
their hyper-intense colors, this black and white medium seemed a calming balm to
my eyes and thoughts. Having dealt with landscapes awash in circular irrigated
fields crisscrossed with linear road patterns, the first drawing was both
familiar and surprising: a trifurcated circle stabbed by a horizontal line, all
composed of strongly gestural strokes. Inexplicably, a title for this series
settled in my brain: “MoonFields.” Over the next four months I returned to these
drawings at intervals, one image leading me to the next in an almost Zen-like
balancing act of self imposed moderation of shapes, gestures and textures. All
the while I wondered from where these images sprang, puzzled less by their final
state than by the actual genesis of the iconography. The drawings led me, almost
calling my hand, from one work to the next. On completing “MoonFields XVII,” it
became clear that I was in the process of creating a visual “Rondo,” leading
back to the first drawing, though with completely different awareness.
“MoonFields XX” completed the cycle. Why twenty works? My “Sinister Drawings”
suite consists of twenty images, so perhaps that was my mental directive. Or
possibly a subconscious harkening back to the plastic sheets that held twenty
slides influenced the decision to stop at twenty. Whichever it is, I am happy
with how it turned out.
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