Dried-out Microns. Pencil stubs. Eraser shavings.
When I start an artwork, I can’t stop myself for hours. On paper, the process is straightforward: a concept leads to research, research calls for a composition, the composition needs reference photos, and hours of tinkering and pensive scrawling slowly ushers the artwork to life. Yet, in reality, the process is hardly that linear. I can open hundreds of images and countless articles searching for the ‘right’ idea, or the most emotive pose, or whether I can justify using exclusively ink for the umpteenth time, and I usually run through draft upon draft before happening upon the right composition. In short, the process is grueling, but one sore hand and a swollen callous later, an idea has actualized from a vague imagining to a tangible illustration, and I practically forget all the hardship that led up to it-and the heap of eraser shreds scattered around my room.
I turn to art when words aren’t enough. I use art to celebrate friendships, to chronicle transient feelings, to memorialize things that we have lost. I started consistently making art when loss was still only in the back of my mind-when I had yet to understand that we lose things even if we aren’t ready. But art means more to me now than just accurately illustrating a picturesque landscape; it’s a way to reimagine the initial mystery of the subject, or to communicate a narrative that isn’t immediately obvious.
Watching dementia eat away at my grandfather, I had no way to verbalize my grief. I was the only one who remembered our annual tomato-planting tradition, the boxes of Romanian folk music in his worn Subaru Forester, and the cubes of homemade bread he’d make while we watched cartoons on his comically old television. Years of memories-and we had nothing to remember it by.
Time waits for no one, so I preserve our anecdotes in artworks. I can carve out his wrinkly and affectionate grins, his witty humor and unspoken hardships-just through a single portrait. All it takes is some grit, a pencil stub, and a dried-out Micron.
