“Ebony Drawings” 2020 – 2021
18” x 24” graphite and colored pencil on paper
This series takes its name from the “Ebony” pencil, a soft and very black graphite. This pencil has been one of my favorite mediums, going back to 2004 with the Black Drawing series and 2006 with the Paper Studies. When rubbed vigorously into the paper, a metallic sheen emerges almost denying the surface of the paper.
I had been very focused on color with recent work including Cosmic Rope Constructions, Scribble Drawings and MAPS and I felt like I needed a break to work more monochromatically. At this time, I was also feeling a bit drained of creativity and I wanted to do some drawing that was simple minded and more of a meditative process — carefully rubbing graphite on the paper for hours at a time without thinking too much!
The white lines in the drawing are negative spaces on the paper where graphite is not applied (some of the lines were first applied with colored pencil and then the graphite worked up to these lines). Controlling these thin lines while applying messy graphite around them was a tense, but somehow pleasing process.
