1977 Sketchbook Drawings

Sketchbook-1977.A - 006

I think I will take you through a journey over the next months if you will permit me. My life as an artist has been far ranging but I always come back to musicality.

In the summer of 1977 at the age of 21 after three years of community college in Saint Louis, Mo studying art I moved to Fort Worth, Texas and lived with my grandparents in an old farm house on about 5+ acres that was built in 1929 by my grandmother’s father. I spent many of my summers with my grandparents as a kid.

Next door was a several acre property that had been owned by my Grandmother’s brother that I had spent plenty of time with as a kid during the summers known as Uncle Doc. Brants who always had a cigar hanging out of his mouth and he chewed tobacco. He was a farmer by nature and his property had, at different times, been hen houses for egg production and later rental stables for horses. Beyond his property were other properties owned by other of my grandmother’s brothers.

My mom had a horse as a kid that was stabled at Uncle Doc’s place. I recall that he also had a few cows. He was not a doctor as far as I know and I am not sure what his actual first name was but he had already died when I moved there in 1977 and his house, while run down was still there.

One of my cousins - his grand daughter - was living in part of it and it was arranged that I could use one or two of the bedrooms at the other end of the house as studio. I spent many pleasant hours in that studio when I wasn’t working at a job, listening to classical music on used albums from 1/2 priced books on an old record player - John Cage - works for prepared piano, loved it, Carl Neilson - a favorite I listened to over and over was Symphony #5, Aaron Copeland, George Gershwin, Gustave Holst, Morrice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, etc. - all 20th century composers and starting to figure out how to paint music. These are a few of the drawings I made in one of my sketchbooks. I even have one sketchbook call the ‘Farmhouse’ sketchbook from 1978. That one has many musical studies in it. I’ll get around to that later.

Sketchbook-1977.A - 016

Sketchbook-1977.A - 017

A variety of other small drawings from that time. I was already starting to think in horizontal lines for developing an idea.

At the same time I was doing a lot gestural drawings just responding to music as I listened to it. I was not really trying to articulate the musical forms but looking more for the improvisational response of my hand to the sounds I was listening to.