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Spring Quarter Essay — March 2008 The Walk Home by Andrew Rush   ©2008 (Dedicated to Bruce McGrew)

It is early spring in the Oracle desert, on a sharp sunny morning. Bruce, my artist neighbor, whistles his ritual birdcall signal at my studio door, announcing today’s appointment for our watercolor painting excursion. We are both strapped with a drawing board and paper hanging from one shoulder and a satchel of colors, brushes, palette and water bottle crisscrossed over the other, and each of our heads well shaded with a good straw hat.

We set out, walking west down the desert drywash, looking for ‘our place’ for the day. After a mile or so, each of us peels off to our private choice – Bruce returns to his beloved ‘bend-in-the-wash’, the site of some of his most luminous studies, while I head up the hill attracted to the rolling slopes of the northern Catalina mountains.

I tell myself I am looking for the most inspired view, but the truth is I’m mostly seeking a comfortable rock to sit on, preferably with a flat spot beside it for my things. Once found, I lay out my studio: palette on the right, brushes and water jug at hand, and my virgin sheet of white paper pinned to the board before me. Now I rest, breathe, and wait. As I become settled and quiet enough, my attention slowly wanders away from myself, and drifts out to contemplate the mountains spread before me in the light of this crisp spring day. Now I am ready to begin.

The first mark of brush to paper breaks the waiting spell. As I work, I become ever more absorbed in the repetition of looking, responding with a mark and then looking again, then again. Eventually I lose track of time, at least the linear time that I usually know. For now ‘time’ seems transformed into a kind of four-dimensional space in which my activity of looking and responding with a mark is joined into the breath of a larger life force itself, even to being absorbed into the marrow of the day. Many artists have tried to speak of this time-less zone that sometimes arises in the process of intense art making. Common to such remarks is a feeling that one’s ‘self’ is dissolved into a larger stream flow. Others quickly add (and I agree) that it is not at all a magical state but more like coming home to yourself, which also then brings you home to your larger family relationship with the outside world.

The sun is now high in the sky, and I suddenly realize that four hours have passed like an instant. My painting is complete but a little strange, a flurry of brush marks recording my morning’s engagement. After packing up, I descend into the wash to re-join Bruce, and we begin the walk home together in silence. It is our habit to defer looking at our morning’s work until later, because for now, we are under an enchantment. The walk home takes us through an enhanced landscape of the forms and colors of our Oracle desert, a gift left in our eyes from the morning’s painting.

Bruce’s devotion to such regular painting excursions still inspires my own work and teaching long after his passing.* Elsewhere in this newsletter, some of our TDS teaching artists and students offer other drawing examples and commentary about the lessons of working regularly from one’s visual world. In my own role as Educational Director, I too try to point out the many good reasons, big and small, about why drawing from life is a valuable practice for people of all ages. For example:

1. Learning the grammar of how images are made by doing it yourself is a core practice that opens many doors to the visual languages of our exploding multimedia world of mass communication.

2. The pleasures of skill building in art can have a broad beneficial effect in the domains of self-expression, self-exploration, and personal confidence.

3. Mastering an art medium can satisfy many natural needs for peer respect, including the possibility of income, and for fellowship with other friends who share an art-making practice with us.

In the end, however, I have to admit that for me the greatest benefit I receive from my own drawing practice is maintaining a ‘way’ to access and contribute my small part in widening the path to the richness of our shared natural world. Or, in other words, the reason I practice drawing is ultimately neither for love nor money, but for the walk home.

* Bruce McGrew was a painter, friend, and a co-founder of the Rancho Linda Vista Art Community in Oracle. He died in 1999.

 

©2008 Andrew Rush. May not be copied or reproduced in any form without permission