Drawing the Body Channeling Divine Energy

I'm back in Can Serrat, Spain for a second time, in a month-long artist residency. Drawing and drawing and drawing all day long!! It is such a pleasure and a gift to be able to do this for a significant period of time.

The project I'm working on here explores the body channeling, giving over to, or being in the flow of 'divine energy,' however people may choose to define it, or in whatever context they have felt it. It could be through a particular spiritual, ritualistic or meditative practice, or in an encounter with an elemental force of nature, or by opening themselves up to whatever may be their concept of God, or in some other way altogether. I've asked friends and acquaintances to consider and embody that state of being, which has been the taking-off point for the final works.

Here are some of the drawings in progress:

Daisy Eneix drawing in progress, detail, 23x16". 2013

Daisy Eneix drawing in progress, detail, 23x16", 2013

Daisy Eneix Faith/Flying Backwards (in progress) 23x14", 2013

Daisy Eneix Sky Float, 23x16", graphite and ink on paper

Daisy Eneix Sky Float (detail), 23x16", graphite and ink on paper

Daisy Eneix drawing in progress, detail, 23x14", 2013

The next stage for these drawings will be to add contextual and atmospheric elements that build upon the state of the being of the figure, as I have begun to do in Flying Backwards/Faith and Float.

Once again I seem to be exploring this idea of resonance between the visceral and the ephemeral, a theme that seems to have always been at the core of my art and inquiry. But in this incarnation, I get to collaborate with others and to work in new media, which both feel like exciting new directions for me.

Confluence & God

Odilon Redon

Noticing uncanny coincidence, which I am seeing more as confluence. There has to be something as work - Nature, God, Consciousness, whatever you want to call it. Something more than what we know. Life is just too uncanny. 

Confluence #1:

1. A running theme in my artwork is an exploration of where the visceral, erotic and spiritual meet. Lately it seems that the spiritual side has a new kind of gravity that I'm ready to drop into artistically. I'm not sure what it will look like, but I'm once again returning to artists that drew me initially in that direction: Odilon Redon, Anselm Kiefer, Ana Mendieta, Joseph Beuys and more recently Michelangelo. There are many others, but these are the first that come to mind.

The surprise: There is an exhibition at the museum where I work that is exploring spirituality, and my assignment, as a docent there, is to explore the section Genesis and discuss how I would present it. Amongst the artists are: Kiki Smith, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Conner. Could not be more perfect for the direction I want to go in my own art.

 Confluence #2:

2. I've been wanting to explore new ways of making marks that resemble printmaking, but without the tedious process of making prints. I want to make art in a more direct, spontaneous manner, but mark the page - incise the paper - as if it was a plate. Scrape it, surface it, burnish it, sand it, ink it, as if it were metal. But also, draw on it.

The surprise: Who did I run into with these questions on my mind but a calligrapher, who is using unusual German inking tools. I don't even know what they are called. But I have them. I thought they were merely calipers. I did not know the full extent of their use. But I can dip them in ink. And so - I am coming up with whole new ways to make marks.

Finding Your Line

Recently Christian Tissier, one of the best-known practitioners of aikido, gave a seminar at my dojo. People came from all over the world to participate. I was glad to learn from him, and also of the surprise opportunity to ask him questions. Aikido is as essential to me as art and, for me, they deeply inform one another.

So I asked him this: At this point in my training, how do I best advance internally? Is it about focusing on something in my practice, or attending more seminars? How does he approach it? [Stay with me here, I'm getting to the art part!]

He said: "You must find your line." He talked about aikido as having many lines, lines of ancestry in particular, and that jumping all over and trying to pick up something from everywhere is actually not so useful. That sooner or later I'm going to have to choose my line, and follow it.

As simple as this may sound, it had never really occurred to me before. I guess I've always believed that I should listen, look, and try to learn from everyone who has something to share. That it is important to remain entirely open. Not to select, if it means leaving out.

Sometimes people just say something at the right time and it goes 'thunk.' Yes, aiming involves going towards. But there is another part, which is about letting fall away the parts that are not the target. That at a certain point in one's practice, being continually open to all new influences may be just as stymying as being totally closed to them. That if I want precision, if I want to get to the core, I also have to hone.

So the obvious next question I had for myself was, what does 'finding my line' look like, both in aikido, and in art? Here is how I applied it to the art:

FINDING MY LINE
1. Literally: What are my unique mark-making techniques?
2. Methodologically: What do I choose to make, and also not to make?
3. Heritage: Who are my artistic ancestors?
4. Innovation: To what new places am I taking this trajectory?

It's not as if I haven't considered these things before in this context; they just haven't been at the forefront.  So I am looking forward to embarking on using these guidelines as a lens, and seeing where it takes me.

SFMOMA last chance dance

SFMOMA had some interesting offerings to experience before closing for renovation today. Most people were on line to see The Clock. For four hours. I didn't have the patience for that. But I did spend some time with a fantastical architect whose whose imagination and line quality had me struck dumb. I thought I was looking at lithographs or some such, but these were free hand drawings!

The images brought a number of science fiction films to mind - Brazil and Alien in particular. But set in the lighting of Metropolis and in something of the surrealist engraving feeling of Max Ernst.

I was also intrigued by a program called The Workshop, offering DIY classes, that had samples set up in the lobby. I haven't really caught on to the 'DIY' craze, but I thought this was a really ingenious use of a gallon plastic bottle. Something about the way it held the light was pretty compelling.

ART, AWAKENING & LOSS

Daisy Eneix, PERSEPHONE IN HADES, 2012 graphite drawing, 22x30

(click on image to enlarge)

Daisy Eneix, SONGBIRD, 2012 graphite drawing, 22x30

(click on image to enlarge)

Daisy Eneix, FELINE, 2012, graphite drawing, 22x30
(click on image to enlarge)

It has been five months since I sent a package to myself from Can Serrat, Spain, which contained preparatory drawings created over a period of six months, and the final drawings I created at a residency while there, a time when my hand was fully coordinated with my eye and the muse, and I had the luxury of drawing six hours a day and took full advantage of it.

I experienced pure joy in the making of these drawings. That I could address this multilayered material, be both isolated and surrounded and influenced by other artists who were also wresting with their muses, and not feel as if I wanted for anything except to be doing what I was doing was a kind of celestial experience. I was channeling a precise and clear energy, purposeful, sometimes huge, but remarkable in its focus and total absence of fear. In martial arts, the peak experience for me is similar. There was a deep awareness and contentment, a stillness inside of motion. It was a kind of awakening. I was realizing a vision, I was open to being guided, and I was in contact with pure creation.

The package of these drawings never arrived. I am lucky that I have any record at all, but I do really wish I had the originals, as well as all of the other sketches and beginnings of new works that were with them. Maybe their loss is the catalyst intended to force me to turn a corner, or release the subject matter altogether, or it's just part of the larger letting go of many things this year. Maybe they will show up one day. It's hard to say. I don't know entirely what to make of it. But I'm trying to listen.

I am grateful that my dear friend and traveling companion Susan Schen took photographs of the drawings with a real camera. They were taken in a combination of sunlight and indoor light, as they were never intended as a final record. Unfortunately, large, gray pencil drawings on gray paper --particularly when so detailed and full of purposely faint lines alongside dark, coarse ones -- don't photograph well without professional lighting, if at all. But since I do have these 'ghosts' of them, I wanted to share them (above).

It is so much harder, while operating in the world of practicality, human relationships and the social and professional practices that are just as essential to me as art, to remember how important this relationship is, the one waiting there, with the Muse. I can only access it when I am truly solitary, and only when I give it my full, undivided attention. Since I am not the kind of person that naturally leans toward solitude, this is always a challenge. But the memory of this and the posting of these drawings may help me to keep striving towards it amongst the other, competing strivings.

I am so grateful to Can Serrat for creating the kind of holding space that they do for the artists who come. It is not only the delight and aesthetic wonder of the place but also its hosts, who imbue it with the kind of spaciousness and quiet, love, tending and merriment, eclecticness, chaos and edge, that allows artists to feel both at home in solitude and in the company of their peers. And also dinners to die for. This seems to be especially helpful for artists.

Overall, I'm just grateful that I got to have this experience, and how vivid it remains in me.

More about Can Serrat:
http://www.canserrat.org/

Additional details of the artwork above are posted on the Can Serrat blog at: 

http://www.canserratart.com/2012/07/meet-artist-daisy-eneix.html

ON MAURICE SENDAK:

Believer: How did you find your artistic style?

Maurice Sendak: It's spontaneous combustion. I don't know what's going to work until I start to draw. It is so out of your hands it is amazing. It just started to happen. Bumble-Ardy was a little boy many years ago and now he's a pig. I don't know why. There's so much I don't know about the procedure.

From:
p78
"I REFUSE TO CATER TO THE BULLSHIT OF INNOCENCE"
Maurice Sendak interviewed by Emma Brockes
The Believer
The 2012 Issue

http://www.believermag.com/

SYMBIOSIS

Painting completed. Commission delivered. Yes!

Daisy Eneix

SYMBIOSIS

ink on wood panel

36x18"

Symbiosis ©2012 Daisy Eneix

Symbiosis (detail) ©2012 Daisy Eneix

Symbiosis (detail) ©2012 Daisy Eneix

Symbiosis, detail ©2012 Daisy Eneix

Symbiosis, detail ©2012 Daisy Eneix

All artwork photographed by Susan Schen.