What we see and experience is a powerful influence on our being. Our sensory input designs our reality. Receptors take external stimuli and curate logical imagery. Sketching, putting lines on paper, is a way we can once more replicate reality having passed into us and then out through us. When drawing studies of the world around me I become more attuned to my connection with all these impossible legions of imagery.
We are in many ways made by what we experience. Good and bad, we may wish to avoid what we know but we can accept it by sketching it. I struggle to believe I deserve to live the peaceful life I lead now, that I’m worthy of having what I want. When I draw the plants in my garden, in my forests, my orchard, I realize it’s all real. I am here. None of these things actually belong to me, not even my sketches, but when I study a subject and my hand forms new lines to honour what I’ve met on this life journey… my effort is mine, and I am here. My paper and ink belong to the earth and so does my body but I am here, on this earth, documenting.
(one would think with deformed thumbs, I’d trim and clean my nails at least)
Our very existence is a tool of documentation. Our life is being sketched out in our mind as it happens, some drawings lost in a sea of memory, some hung in the entryway of our mind. My choice to continue this duty in the physical world is one of cooperation.
I fought against my urge to draw. I figured I didn’t have the talent or patience, but everyone has an artist within them just as they have a scientist, a teacher, a philosopher, a doctor, and more. These latent abilities are given to us by being human, whether we choose to pursue them as a passion or career or not. We may have an affinity toward one more than another but our multiplicity as people allows for us to look at the world through many eyes.
Once we cooperate with who we are, cooperate with the way the world works (not the way your parents told you the world works, but the way that makes itself known as natural order), then we suddenly understand very clearly why we do certain things.
I sketch because I’m here and because I know why I sketch.
Sustaining Practice 