Drawing Books 1.

Quite a few of my coloured pencil drawings feature a weathered paperback copy of Lawrence Durrell's "Avignon Quintet". This is not surprising as the book has often served me as a kind of parallel universe. In another drawing (left) it forms part of a totem-like structure. In this instance I liked the way that age and use/misuse had combined to form the curved edges.

"Art and Outrage".

   I have just re-read "Art and Outrage". First published in 1959, it is a correspondence about Henry Miller between Alfred Perlés  and Lawrence Durrell with an intermission by Henry Miller. This time around I was stuck by some comments about the roll of the artist. Durrell at one point cites "Art and Artist" by Otto Rank who thought that art was going into a new phase which would be characterized by what he called "personality-development" and that this would not be expressed in outward forms but by inward growth. I also love Durrell´s comment that.

                "Art reserves its greatest treasures for those who forget its existence".
 
    Later in the book the intention of the artist comes under scrutiny when Perlès cons
iders that,

        "Intention diminishes the artist. The sun does not "intend" to radiate heat, it radiates it".