Penciled Hearts

Sunday afternoon, I finally had to break down and clean my office … so that I could get back to the business of messing it up again. I admit, it’s pretty bad when a cat can’t walk across my desk without stumbling. It took the entire afternoon to finish, partly because I’m easily distracted. I always find something interesting hiding among the papers on my desk and work table. This week it was a stack of art pads that had become buried in the month or so of refuse. For the last few years I’ve dedicated most of my creative efforts to writing but before that I was painting or drawing twice a week. My work rarely starts out with a theme, influenced as it is by the practice of art jounaling described in The Artful Journal – A Spiritual Quest by Maureen Carey, Raymond Fox and Jacqueline Penney. Finding art work several years old is like finding an old short story or essay … I can look at it as if it’s not mine and not be as invested in whether it’s good or not. I like to wonder what was going though my head at the time.

I found one series of pencil drawings I did over a period of several months in 2006 interesting. Each drawing featured one or more hearts and a cryptic title that I’d penciled in the corner, along with a date. You can click on any drawing to see more detail. The first one, Heart of Stone, seems to say that even those who have a heart of stone are looking for love.