Drawing

For a long time I remembered a passage I'd read somewhere about Degas, that his was the art of the "ensemble." A group of dancers, a group of horses, the audience of a concert, or the loitering people at the ballet rehearsal, all these collections of things have the sense of being united in very natural and unself-conscious ways. Ever since reading that -- and of course noting it in Degas's pictures -- I have had some curiosity about how to capture a similar sense of things in my paintings.

This drawing of horses is made from my daughter's toys. I arranged them to overlap, to seem as though they were moving in a line together, perhaps out of a corral. Drawing them, one thinks about real horses and wants them to seem life-like. Yet, I also think about them as toys. They have many happy associations as my daughter's toys, all the loveliness of watching her learn and grow.

The green that surrounds the horses is added without reference to anything. It's amazing how just the addition of the color creates the beginnings of landscape and weather and temperature.

The spiral coil of the notebook, the fact that the drawing spilled over into the facing page, prevents this drawing from being framed for sale. But artists of course have drawings that are made strictly for personal reasons, and they should always make many such drawings. Some of the best drawings in history were privately made for the appreciative audience of one.