Bay Bark Texture Inspires a Drawing
Did the dog bite someone's pants?
Detail: Bay Bark Blur, August 2011
Detail: Bay Bark Blur, August 2011
We have a huge and very old Bay Laurel tree right outside our kitchen window. I used a photo of its bark to get me started on this digital decalcomania project.
Detail: Bay Bark Blur, August 2011
The finished drawing is very dense with details so I thought it would be fun to post several enlargements of some of my favorite parts of the drawing. The image at the end of this post presents the entire drawing.
All of the drawings in this series have surprised me with the little vignettes that arise in various nooks and crannies. I especially like the little figures in these vignettes. I might copy all of them from each drawing and create a line-up of my favorites.
Bay Bark Blur, August 2011. The complete image.
Coming soon: posts of a few more works in the recent digital decalcomania series.
bobcomings.com 
This petri dish of writhing life makes me think of thoughts I’ve had that old things, like the bay tree, stone cobbles on the streets of Paris, Holy water basins in ancient cathedrals may have some kind of memories (visual, traces of dna or virus, olfactory, other) stored in them. And your decalcomania technique is channeling some of them into view. I get a little agitated looking at all at once, but squinting helps me enjoy the richness. And they are so rich.
I love your insight about the memories of old things. I had not ever put it into those words before, but immediately identified with your comment. As for the agitation: It IS agitated and agitating. It is the density of experience that subsumes me on a walk in the woods or while studying a stained wooden tabletop. So much, even too much, to see all at once. Also I purposely let my images create each other and melt into and out of each other so the image is continuously forming, falling apart, and reforming in the viewer’s eye. It is an intense way to see and I look forward to a gradual calming of the waters. Sometimes I think of this series as “Preliminary Work on the Stilling of an Active Mind.”