253 - After Bill's Rye Beach No 2

I draw first, and only afterwards do I begin to think more consciously about what it means. Ofttimes, I notice a connection between what appears and what I’ve been turning over internally - sometimes in a visual way, sometimes in a thinking way. I don’t aim for that connection in advance; it simply emerges through the work. I’ve so greatly benefited from coming to know the work of Bill Henderson, who is now so sadly missed. His paintings are something I return to because it reminds me that making can be fearless and I feel a kind of undercurrent in our respective work. Many artists are shaped like this - brought up through the felt presence of others whose work feeds their own. To feel myself in a lineage softens the solitude of working from a place of not knowing, of moving as an outsider. It offers companionship - quiet, steady, and real.