What is a divination drawing? Home Commission a divination drawing


November 2008





Just in case you thought all my drawings were in red colored pencil, today's drawing shows that sometimes color insists on coming through. I don't decide. When a drawing demands it, I color. And usually it is not a single drawing but a wave of color over many drawings and possibly many days. So I take the emergence of color as a sign of change and the swirling vortices seem to back me up. Are you feeling some release and good flow this Thanksgiving weekend? I suggest you anchor and amplify those good feelings. The boxes underlying the flow might mean you'll need to recall that state in the coming week.
11.29.2008
Today is the day after Thanksgiving and I am distinctly aware of a calmness in the psychic energy - it seems to be quiet on all fronts. The phylogons are in a playful mood. It is a day to try out a few things that haven't gotten much attention lately.
11.28.2008
The wave seems to have broken on the shore. The energy of the wave is absorbed into some kind of organization. Or maybe the dominoes have all fallen over. On the lower half it appears that the windows of opportunity are piling up. How long before a new structure emerges?
11.27.2008
The inner circle seems to be a doorway to the outer sphere. There is an increased emphasis on how the inside drives the outside or how the emotional realm influences the physical realm through information transmission.
11.26.2008
A six day gap for family and travel...now back to the non-ordinary...

I'm reading today's drawing as imperfectation and expectation.

Are the figures in the drawing mobius strips that just aren't right? Is the mobius an archetypical attractor? Do we think, "anything that has a strong resemblance is a mobius?"

Or, as I suspect, are new forms beging revealed but our preconceptions don't allow us the subtle distinctions to differentiate?
11.25.2008
The slices have started to spread out but now they are connected. There were five drawings made in the last day that show some variation of connectedness - from delicate threads to touching corners. And how is the manifold changed as the web presents itself more boldly?
11.19.2008
Everything all at once. It seems like many sepaerate slices are accumulating - trying to align or getting in conflict. My hope is that a new harmonic resonnance can be discovered and a beautifully proportioned chord of experience will be sustained.
11.18.2008
A cone contains all possible ellipses. The phylogons, which I read as moments of our experience, section the cone creating a different ellipse on each plane. Everyone perceives a different section of the same cone. The cone might be a metaphor for time, the universe or complexity growing outward from a point or converging to a singularity.
11.17.2008
Sections of time and symbols - maybe Sunday is a day to summarize and reflect. I am thinking about how special each moment is. How the path of the phylogons probably does not follow what we call linear time. And I am realizing that the way we think of our past changes as fast as what we imagine our future to be.
11.16.2008
The 'scape persists today with the addition of some sort of player. What is the relationship of the formica layer to the 'scape? Is it my reality superimposed on the turbulent? Or maybe it is the layer of collective consciousness fighting against what it doesn't believe is happening. Have the two layers had some interaction?
11.14.2008
An unknown landscape can be ominous. If we look across from the bright optimistic bloom on the upper left side, today's drawing next gets complex, then contracted and finally a new 'place' emerges large across the bottom. If it were in motion this 'scape would be a tempest and even while it is static it certainly has as much dark as light. Even if this drawing is not as optimistic as I try to be, I have recently been encouraged to pay attention to dark signs because the unknown is also the unexplored.
11.13.2008
Today is filled with pages, drawing cards, frames, phylogons, bits or whatever you want to call them. The view from here is an 'outside' frame of reference - standing aside and watching the flow either because I am learning from the passage or there is absolutely nothing I can do inside.
11.12.2008
A simple block grows more complex until it becomes as complex as a city. I am reminded of Stuart Davis and the 21 years I lived in NYC. I am also thinking about how simple combinations lead to immeasurable variation.
11.11.2008
Looks like the stacks are getting emptied out - gutted. Am I responding to reports of vacant office buildings or perhaps a more subtly shaded feeling? Time will tell.
11.10.2008
I've been thinking a lot about the content of my thought when I draw and how that filters and evokes the subconscious. As an experiment I asked this question of myself - "what is the nature of my involvement with drawing as divination?" or "What does it mean that I want to pursue this type of practice?" and today's drawing is the result. It suggests to me some deep entanglement and mutual dependency. I can't ignore that it also looks like a chain. I know that my commitment to a studio art practice has been a burden and a pleasure. I seem to be telling myself that refining my drawing practice into a divination practice will deepen that commitment and its rewards.
11.9.2008
Today seems to be a summary day - when all the drawings are collections or reflections of the past. Two of my longstanding themes seem to assert themselves. They are expressed variously as: the city and the country, the synthetic and the natural, the grid and the river, the inner and the outer, the dense and the open, my life before and my life now......you get the idea. While trying to decipher the subconscious metaphors of this drawing I start to see an articulation of the relationship between two separate realities and that gives me a smile.
11.8.2008
Okay - a mobius - an infinite loop - I know - a cliche totality symbol - but it is a clear archetype and I have a passion for it. And there is something different here. It is not a smooth loop but one made of phylogons. It seems to be saying to me that this loop does not have one twist but the possibility of twists at every stage.
11.7.2008
The windows of opportunity seem to be changing today. The phylogons are drifting apart and moving out into space. The layers are still present but finding new relationships. Reconfiguration is definitely in the air.
11.6.2008
New stacks today, filled with details, earthy and showing signs of growth. Can the phylogons be reforming in a positive way? With LIBOR at four year lows this morning we might see some real flow.
11.5.2008
More signs that things are staring to flow again. The blocks are breaking up and ushering in a new phase. Hmm -it *is* election day. For a while I have been experimenting with putting laser cut formica on top of drawings. A delicate operation trying to integrate the two disparate media. Recently I realized that each material represented a separate reality and the overlap described something about their intersection.
11.4.2008
Weekend whimsey - okay - so it's not all doom and gloom around here - Paul Klee seems to have co-opted the scrolls and rolled them into onions. Many layers - a birthday - a quiet day at home - lots of creative energy - a loving family. And my wife loves onions. And the largest farm crop around here is onions. And with winter coming we are all wearing lots of layers. Life is good.
11.3.2008
The scroll has appeared in the last day or two - first in software as an experiment with spiral motion, then in some reading I was doing, and now writ large in several drawings.I can't ignore that. When I drew the larger scroll structure I wondered if the scroll had any content and I saw more scrolls. The line came to me, "the content of the scroll is the scroll, the content of thought is thought."
11.1.2008


What is a divination drawing? Home Commission a divination drawing