DRAWINGS
“The world calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things”
Mary Oliver
Drawing is a way to abide with the phenomenal world, a path of truthful telling about what we see, thus it is an an expression of fidelity to the world through which we receive the blessings that the world is constantly offering us.
We are summoned into the world by the world itself. Its summons can be felt in an urge to look closely at something and make a drawing of it - be it the shadows on the faces of friends and strangers, or the curl of a dried leaf, or the undulating lines of a familiar hillside. Through the practice of drawing, our eyes are opened to the revelations of a luminous world.
Drawing is an ecstatic process. Once we assume that we know what something is, we tend to become blind to it, overlooking how the display of phenomena is constantly unfolding and revealing itself to our senses. By drawing we move outside the boundaries of our familiar ways of seeing. Drawing is a means of de-literalizing our perceptions, immersing our senses in a reciprocal exchange with the world. Through the process of drawing we draw closer to phenomena, and to the possibility of seeing the weave of ordinariness and numinosity in the world around us.
I learned to draw from Nerina Simi in the Studio Simi in Florence, Italy - established by her father Filadelfo Simi.
