10.8.2014 Flipping through stacks of drawings, not focused on any part of the drawing, too tired to think, just sitting, just looking, just feeling the visual texture of the materials, the slightly toothy texture of the paper infused with streaks of yellow ochre pigment, fine grains sticking out of the surface of the paper, I felt these objects transmit back to me the residual energy of my three day immersion.

Not identifying landscapes or faces, no naming, no judgement, no notion of art, only aesthetic pleasure, the lift, the newness, something heretofore unseen now in my possession; I laid one singular item slowly on top of the other, open to what sensations they stirred.

It happened the moment after my eyes crossed a piece of map with the words 'sand pit' printed on it. The meaning of the text entered my mind just as I focused on a smeared clump of sandy yellow ochre pigment and in my mind the words were overlaid on the paint. I immediately grasped the correspondence, the simultaneous reality, between words and materials.

I understood the resonance between text and textures; that pigment was sand, while simultaneously representing sand in the drawing. The possibilities for interplay of map and territory, signified and signifier, and material and meaning were endless; and with this insight my art found what it didn't know it needed: a pathway through which to meaningfully enter the physical world.
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