Satisfaction

The satisfactions I experience while drawing derive from the following:

First, rising to the technical challenge – can I pull this off? More often than not, I’ve found the answer is yes. I try to select projects with enough technical difficulty to force a little growth each time.

Second, the highly tactile pleasure of handling and manipulating the medium. There's a strong connection with the materials themselves.

Third, having a viewer experience some kind of response to the work. Positive or negative is OK – indifference amounts to failure with that viewer. The toughest viewer/critics are the ones who dismiss any stripe of academic drawing as irrelevant to contemporary art. What can one say? In the end, artists must do that for which they are best suited - regardless of the prevailing climate.

Finally - completing something that will leave behind a little bit of how I experienced my life in the world once I’ve gone.