the desert Series

When I finished the Spring semester of teaching, I was eager to head into the studio, for pure looking and silence. I often  think about the time that I camped in the desert, the macro and micro levels of experience- the landscape, plants, the close palate, the stripped down feeling of it. I have not been there since September, but I was inspired to make small drawings as meditation, as exploration, as memory and hand work. For this series of 50 I used walnut oil and prussian blue water color. This series is available on etsy. Enjoy

rip rap and lichen

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

pool and needles

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

fish hooks

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

arch and drag

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

sidelong glance

notes on Christopher Wilmarth

Long Memphis 1973

image from

http://art.1stdibs.com/art_detail.php?id=14124

"an artist is entrusted with an access and required to keep it clear and the tools change with the obstructions but the place is always the same... ungraspable phantom of life..."

"obliquity is essential to Wilmarth's metaphorical imagination- at first literally, when he shaped his lights to make oblique shadows, and later, in a more arcane way, when he thrust out into real space with standing pieces that played upon the convention of perspective and its misleading illusions. The sidelong glance of a sculptor given to reverie is indispensable."

From the catalogue: Christopher Wilmarth: Gravity and Light