Darkness and light

In recent days I have been occupied with thoughts of  life and loss in the lives of others as well as in my own.  But especially in those of others, those affected by the pain accompanying sudden loss of life, sudden challenges to feelings of security and safety we all want to embrace us and embrace at all times; the disconnected continuum of love, support and nurture, which is offered most naturally, where does it go?  How do we respond to these losses which we all share?
I felt what I can only describe as a profound empathy for parents and grandparents.  The loss of a child being without comparison, in my mind.  The surviving siblings and the classmates of the tiny lives taken left with only a vacuum to contemplate and the limited ability to comprehend. Their paths to maturity have taken a jolted  redirection.  To contemplate it is one thing, to support these losses will be a continuing challenge and responsibility to individuals as well as community.
Hopefully, the attention to this horror won't fade but will become embedded.  Not just the safety aspects will be appropriately considered and modified but a healthy, long term effort will evolve to care for all who were harmed.
I feel fairly confident that individuals will accept the challenges and responsibilities; I am not so confident that  the nation will match the care and concern of individual citizens.  I hope that isn't the case.
It only takes light though, it seems.  Hopefully it will reach each of us and we'll be surprised and pleased by the experience.

Work on paper

18" x 24"

I'll post some oils from November soon.  Saved too many drawings!

More from "Productive November"!

The top drawing (charcoal and pastel) seems to me energetic and simultaneously still.  I'm captured by the ambiguity and feel satisfied that I have recorded myself in a moment I wasn't fully aware of at the time I did the picture.  Not to sound like a tired beer commercial but it actually doesn't get better than that.  Reminded of what I didn't even notice!  Or didn't dare consider?  A little like living on the edge.  That explains the energy part.
The oil portrait might have something going for it, I'm not sure.  This is how it looked about two weeks ago; I've made revisions since.  Although it isn't as loose as I might like, I've obviously taken license with color and line to fracture some of the reality....the structural, material reality...in an effort to plumb myself in the dynamic and capture something ephemeral. In my mind more important, more significant, more elusive, more satisfying than a life-like rendering.  More satisfying?  Well, maybe my satisfaction is in trying to obtain the short-lived experience and making it last.......which isn't all that different than what the representational realist has in mind but I want to remember how I felt, my emotion, my awareness.  That seems much more "active" if you will.

Two Recent Pieces

Something new/something revised

Charcoal and pastel
on paper

Oil on canvas

So, the image on top is a very recent drawing; below is the final version of all the versions that I'll layer upon this canvas.  If I do the pose again it'll be on a new support!

New

Oil on canvas

Pastel on paper

Oil on canvas
18" x 18"

Here are two new ones and a better photograph of a work I posted here earlier.
I think I'd describe all of these as expressive pieces, i.e. in a style inspired by the various schools of expressionism.  I really want to expand, experiment with, study and create in this style of image making....so much to do and so much opportunity to grow!