Still within the notebook, the 'grid drawing' begun early this morning when a pearly mist blanketed the garden, completed some hours later when the sun had ridden free of the grey.
Up early this morning, as M, my partner, had to begin work at eight. The garden, when I went out to greet Minos and take him his breakfast; he has adopted an almost feral habit of living entirely out of doors this summer, was mysterious and cloistered; I felt like an intruder. I love mist and fog, love the way colours are trammeled by soft grey and disappear into the velvety atmosphere. Perhaps that is why I cover the colours of my grid drawings with an even, finely drawn layer of graphite.The grey is like a mist descending before one's eyes, through which the colours glow softly. I am recalled to the films I made at one time; I hung a silk chiffon scarf of pale grey before the lens, which billowed in moving air and through which all was diffused, uncertain. It is that feeling of mystery, of uncertainty that the grid drawings seem to possess, one is not quite sure whether one is supposed to be looking at them, even though the first impulse is perhaps to let one's gaze penetrate the gauzy layer of graphite.
Several telephone calls with my mother of necessity complicated my work this morning; there was an issue with her medication which needed to be resolved, so that I did not complete the drawing until well after midday, by which time the sun was shining with optimistic energy through the window and illuminating my workplace. When the drawing was 'finished', when I had coloured in the bottom left hand square with graphite, I released my cramped hand from it's clutch of the pencil, photographed the drawing and went outside to sit with Minos. I took the third volume of Anne Truitt's journal with me - I am close to finishing it, and shall miss her insight and carefully wrought portraits of family life, childhood remembrances. She describes her work in detail; she made singular pieces, free-standing columns of painted wood, which I have seen in reproduction, and drawings , the descriptions of which tantalize me as I have never seen them. I worry that my 'grid drawings' are so similar; one needs discernment to allow the subtle differences between them to reveal themselves.
It is not 'wrong' to have fallen for a particular palette of colours, in whose differing configurations I take delight, and not 'wrong' to have alighted upon a particular, unvarying format, after all, Agnes Martin worked consistently with a given set of dimensions for years. I just worry that I am not exploring, I'm standing still. Perhaps it is alright to stand still, and let the delicate drawings come as they will; if I attempt to impose any control over them, I soon come to grief. For the moment, then, I shall stand still and allow the work to evolve, to unfold slowly in slow time; time takes on a different shape when I am engaged in making a drawing, much as it did this morning, certainly the early morning experience was vastly different from the afternoon's, when I brought the drawing to fruition.
Tomorrow is the first day of autumn, the season of 'mists and mellow fruitfulness'. I feel a tremor of excitement at the thought, savour the last golden day of a summer unlike any other summer I have known, just as the spring was made strange by the experience of 'lockdown'. During the spring, I made 'grid drawings' as though my life depended upon the activity, mostly sitting in the back bedroom, with the window open to the balmy air, Silas curled up beside me. Now I have exchanged my place of work for a corner of the settee in the sitting room, enjoying the constant North light by day, at dusk, the lighting of the street lamp across the road, which at first flicker shows ruby before transmuting that subtle rosy red into flourescent orange. It is then that I draw the curtains before curling up again with my notebook.
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