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Regent of Sorrows

 

 

"Regent of Sorrows"

I think the title comes from a poem but I don't remember where. If I had my library of poetry books handy, I would be looking through one by a poet from Chile, but I don't, so I can't. That's the sorrow of it already. I had to look the word "regent" up again. From the dictionary: "A person who rules during the childhood, absence, or any unfitness of a rightful ruler." But this isn't a person. This is art. Like the blues that flows from the lips of a singer lamenting the loss of a lover or a sharecropper who sinks into the tormented sobbing of knowing that insects have destroyed this year's crops, the pencil marks contain my sorrows. These sorrows are too great for one man to embrace, so I invest the powers of containment in an expression of pencil marks on paper. At the center of the field of whiteness resides the illusion of a landscape viewed from overhead, thrusting up out of an unknown body of waters. Or is it the image of the lower part of a heart suspended in raw air with marks around it as though to protect it from further harm? Yet the circle is open as the heart is open, in spite of this field of sorrows, like a regent who is only temporary at best, and perhaps self-serving with ulterior motives at worst. It is due to the lack of recourse otherwise that demands that a regent be named and trusted in spite of misgivings, that such matters arise.

I really like this drawing as it has incorporated some of the drawing techniques I enjoy doing. A sense of solidity dissolving into formlessness at center stage while other lines define boundaries in the flatness of the paper and other marks show the gesture of the hand in celebration of the dance. At the core of dance as a spiritual exercise is the awareness that everything we do is a dance. As my arm dances in space around me, the dance is recorded by way of the pencil grazing the surface of the paper and leaving a trail by which the dance is captured in visual space. Dance, by God! Yes!

Oliver Loveday © 051211:12:10pm EDT

"Regent of Sorrows"
Pencil
5 x 3.5 inches | 12.7 x 8.9 cm
Strathmore 50 lb | 74 g/m
January 12, 2010

On April 26, 2016, I began the task of doing a series of watercolor paintings based upon the sketches from the "Tunnel Vision Tapes". The process involved using charcoal to sketch out the lines from the pencil sketch. The goal is to get as close as I can to those original lines within a few minutes. Then I would go over the charcoal with an eraser to smudge and push the charcoal into the watercolor paper. After documenting the charcoal, I would take the painting outdoors and work on it with watercolor paint. The next day I would do a second session with each painting. Using the "dry brush" technique on the previous session would increase the luster, richness of the colors already down, and add more color to areas as needed. While the original sketches are not for sale, these works are available by credit card via PayPal. To see detail photographs of the paintings, click the photograph to go to the watercolor page it is presented on.

 

"Regent of Sorrows" Oliver Loveday © 2016

"Regent of Sorrows"
Charcoal and watercolor
30 x 22 inches | 76 x 56 cm 120 lb/300 gsm cold press
April 30, 2016
$3,500.00 (USD)

 

 

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Created: June 26, 2016