While writing I've also been working on a number of small portraits: both in ballpoint and paint. The purpose of these sketches isn't clear to me, and at this point in time they act as both a repository for thinking and evidence of the same.
There's some amount of difficulty in renaming yourself as a writer/painter rather than the converse, so perhaps these sketches are an anchor for myself and the visual art world I occupy.
With a project that's going to run over a couple of years I need to resist the tendency to get shit done right away. Time is required: Time to distill, to evolve and devolve. One of things that painting and drawing has over writing is the very tangible reference to time. The mark (especially in paint) is imbued with a temporal quality not so readily grasped in the written product. And if I am to paraphrase/butcher Dave Hickey, the greatness of portrait painting is that it brings the dead, the past into the present, it insists through its very process, on life.
With that in mind, a few sketches: The painted ones are 12"x9", acrylic and oil on masonite, the drawing are around 8"x6", ballpoint on Moleskine
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