My Dark Drawings
- Lee Tribe
- Jul 1, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 6
My Dark Drawings begin as I cover the white paper with the blackest of black charcoal. Working in a spontaneous manner I push and pull the charcoal this way and that, allowing the initial flow to take what direction it will. The surface is quickly loaded, black completely dominating white—but it is the white that holds the key. I rub, smear, and cover, standing back looking hard as I search for clues offered by remaining outposts of white. Soon enough my hand goes to work, led by my eye, pulling up light from the darkness with licks from my eraser, trying to locate that which is to be set free. Often the path taken leads nowhere and fresh charcoal almost covers my tracks, a history begins in the traces left by the forsaken trail. Always stepping back to look, once in a while taking photos with my phone to compress and clarify my progress. Then again my eraser goes to work. An image emerges, at times too quickly for its own good, yet others can be more recalcitrant. However when they do reveal themselves their confidence assured, they own me. Taking the lead they drag me along. I become their instrument, the initial clues gaining power, giving, informing, and demanding more as I follow their measure, dancing to their tune, uncovering rhythms as they evolve, leading on to the inevitable conclusion.
Their kindred cousins, ‘the others’, those whose ambiguity I desire, but it is so hard to find, slipping and sliding in the blackness. Again errant keyholes of light offer a release, a chance to realize an alternate prize, one that is seldom attained. Capriciously, they give lots and take back more. Show yet don’t tell! They know me all too well, these elusive shadowy potential presences. They tease almost wantonly, forcing me to bury them beneath my burned black charcoal. Seemingly understanding they could emerge again in another guise. At times that which was earnestly sought becomes a wasteland, chewed upon yet undigested, too hard to swallow.
The tango recommences and the hare runs free.
When all at once a fleeting glimpse sets tentative goals and these are sensed, sought, and achieved. This, on their own terms not mine, they tell me, ‘do no more for there is nothing more to do!’ The ambiguity achieved, a that or this, a this or that. The image giving once—then once again, the other and another, caught between being and slipping away, a duplicitous fiction. I fix them on the paper, and look, hope, ponder, in a perplexed vexation of delight.
