BLACK DRAWINGS

Throughout the  later 1980's, I had  drawn to the recitation of the 99
names of Allah, but there was a time c.1991 when I  changed practise. Instead of an impeccable technique in ink,
I would  "break my hand" and explore  awkwardness, color, and a  black ground. In retrospect, I can see that it was an
attempt to integrate the sense of lose, both of my friends lost to AIDS, and  the
distance I had put between myself and the Sufis. These drawings, done in pastels, became a kind of journey into the
underground. They are not without a certain humor, however,  and I executed them at a clip, often eight or so in the span of a day.  I  have destroyed a great many --a number were later  turned into constructions . Fifty or so have survived
destruction, of which these are a sample. 

one of the problems I was working on was color separation--a printer in Oakland had asked me to devise
something which might be reproduced, and it was my notion to  print something like this drawing or the one before it on black vinyl insect screening .

another question was whether antithetical compositions could be put on top of each other

there was also the attempt to record the after effect of the deaths  where I had been  in attendance--so that this  drawing is almost an image of a journey through the land of the dead for me.

this would be the altogether happier subject matter of creatures at ebb tide by he sea

or Poseidon and a Nereid. The subject matter of the underworld--or Nekuya--re-appears below.

Looking back, I see the struggle between the pull to oblivion and an inherent joi de vivre.

                 This is common to everyone, I now know.

                                                 (a "snow drawing")

                                   (a " sex on the couch" drawing)

(a "rumble")

                                                         (a coral garden)

                                             (a coral garden lite by a half moon)