The Form and Function of Place

February 22, 2005

It's amazing how differently a place can present itself. Equally amazing to me is the differences within ourselves that can transform the way we receive a place, or a moment in time. During this visit to Boise the skeletal trees along the river seemed more alive to me than if they'd had all the budding greens of Spring atop them. At one point a fierce storm rolled toward the setting sun, and the whole copse along the shore erupted into a firebrand.

The splendor of this moment burned itself in my mind. But, when it came time to translate it as a drawing, with months of time and hundreds of miles between the now and then, a different sentiment emerged. It became less an expression of color, and more a reflection on sharing in that dramatic tableaux with my father. Somehow the color became irrelevant and only the sharp contrasts between black and white remained. That, and the drifting into shapelessness away from the center of our perception.