A drawing from 2005, one of a series called Mapping Existence.
I’ve spent a lifetime around art — teaching it, designing it, selling it, and making it.
Funny thing: becoming a full-time artist later in life may be the hardest chapter yet.
Still working.
Still becoming.
What keeps you doing what you’re doing?
Another map made years later, still wrestling with some of the same questions.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what remains of us.
Not reputation.
Not a big story.
Not even the full face.
Just trace.
A shadow on concrete isn’t the person, but it proves something stood in the light.
I keep circling the idea that existence doesn’t require constant visibility. When awareness drops away — sleep, silence, the spaces between — there isn’t spectacle. There isn’t narrative. And yet something remains.
Maybe that’s what a shadow is.
Not the full reality.
Not the whole person.
Just proof that contact happened. That light met form.
Not monument.
Existence.
A human being is only breath and shadow. ~ Sophocles
“I am the maker of rules, dealing with fools.”
— Eye in the Sky, Alan Parsons Project
Curious how the story begins with the last stroke of the pen or brush. As I look at the image — the strokes, shadows, and hues — something of the ’80s returns: the Saint, that holy spot. Dancing there with people I loved — accepting and greeting the universe. Death, hope, sorrow, play, joy, and the celebration of life — and a song: Eye in the Sky.
The line says “dealing with fools”…Nah. What circulates in my head is “protector of fools. I can read your mind.”
Bill Hendricks (Shadowmason)
Song reference: Eye in the Sky — The Alan Parsons Project
Related post:
Surrealism, Automatic Drawing and the Spirit
— a reflection on creativity, memory, and the unseen.
I had the pleasure to judge the Christian Art Show at Cross View Lutheran Church along with Marko Fields. It was indeed a pleasure to see so many works.
I am grateful to the congregation of Cross View Lutheran Church for recognizing the importance art plays in our lives by supporting artists and administering the Christian Art Festival.
I had the pleasure to judge the Christian Art Show at Cross View Lutheran Church along with Marko Fields. It was indeed a pleasure to see so many works.
I am grateful to the congregation of Cross View Lutheran Church for recognizing the importance that art plays in our lives by supporting artist and administrating the Christian Art Festival.
Art is meant to be shared. It is a poetic form of communication that helps us understand and reflect on our world and its cultures and our relationship within its context.
What struck me most about the submissions that Cross View Lutheran Church received was the honesty that came through in the work and the sincerity in the process of art making. I see it, as a Quaker, as another approach to prayer. Where listening to that that stirs within is as important as vocalizing prayer.
The opening is Saturday, April 29, 2006
6 – 8 pm.