What to do in my daybed?
Since lockdown in March, 2020, I have been drawing with color pencils and pen and ink, working on drawing pads no smaller than 6×8″ and no larger than 9×12″. Of the moment women figurines that date to 2000 BCE and earlier are my muses.
Women figurines. Halaf Period. Northern Mesopotamia. Sixth millennium BCE.
Iran. 2000 BCE. Eretz Museum, Tel Aviv.
With their extra ordinary mammaries and massive hips of voluptuous strength, these women are power figures. Regardless of archaeological theories that posit they are fertility figures or symbolic tokens that a woman had been contracted out to marriage, for me they are goddesses, strong, in control and not subservient to anyone. For thousands of years, civilizations have grown up and fallen down around them and they endure.
In my drawings I distort the figure, emphasize the breasts, exaggerate the hips so that a woman of substance emerges.
Sketch power woman.
From there, I sometimes channel the energy of Sonia Delaunay and Leon Bakst, both Russian emigres to Paris in the early twentieth century. Her clothes feature overall bold geometric designs in pulsating colors.
Sonia Delaunay Nested squares
Sonia Delaunay Circles
Leon Bakst’s watercolor sketches of the costumes he designed for the Ballets Russes may be peppered with spirals, squares, and ikat designs, sometimes all in one outfit, a cacaphonous symphony of form and color.
Leon Bakst. Costume design for Le Dieu Bleu.
Leon Bakst Costume Design for Afternoon of a Faun.
Some of my drawings:
a sketch for a woman superhero
Sketch for a striped pants suit.
Lounging under the stoa
Sketch of a woman holding a yellow striped umbrella next to a lamp inspired by Sonia Delaunay.
Contemplation.
who me?
Puzzled.
