LBI #1 - in My Drawers

Day #26 of What's in My Drawers.

LBI #1
Watercolor pencil on paper
6" x 6"
©NanciHersh
$36.00

                                                         

Bring on the sun... the summer of 2011 was full of challenges - and blessings.

So when a  friend of Nate's from NJ invited him to spend a few days on Long Beach Island with the family I took the opportunity to drive him there and spend the time with my friend Donna who also had a house on the island that summer.

Long Beach Island has always been a favorite place of mine and I appreciated the time to boogey board, read, bike and relax with my friend.

I had my small block or Arches watercolor paper and my Caran D'ache watercolor pencils and let the warmth and the beauty of the island flow through my body and onto the paper.

Click here to see the post about What's in My Drawers and be in the loop for the rest of the art and stories in this blog series.

Flight- in My Drawers

Day #15, December 2, 2013 from What's in My Drawers.

Flight
Watercolor, ink and collage on paper
7.5" x 11"
©NanciHersh
$85.00

                                                            

This is a piece I started when I was at Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital back in 2011 for my surgery. It was actually a pretty groovy kind of hospital stay (especially compared to the one back in 2003 at St. Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick!)  I had a room to myself, the nurses were fantastic, as was near by family and friends who came stopped by with goodies, and there was a lot of interesting contemporary art on the walls in every corridor.  Art makes everything better.

They also had an activity and social area on another floor. I went up there one day- sun was streaming in, live music was playing and there were lots of art supplies. So I dug in... grabbed some heavy watercolor paper, brushes and paint and thought positive thoughts.

Click here to see the post about What's in My Drawers and be in the loop for the rest of the art and stories in this blog series.

Coming up for Air

LBI #1, 2011
Watercolor pencils on paper
6"x6"
©2011NanciHersh

Recent down time at the beach gave me some much needed space.  I felt like I was finally coming up for air.  The weeks following Nate's accident were filled with doctors appointments for he and I, surgery, chemo, and just coping.  Beach - and water time were just what I needed to helped me remember to just be and experience the moment.

Cy Twombly passed away the day before I arrived on Long Beach Island and the New York Times featured a lengthy obituary on his long, and often misunderstood career.  What resonated most personally, was the following paragraph from the Times article:

In the only written statement Mr. Twombly ever made about his work, a short essay in an Italian art journal in 1957, he tried to make clear that his intentions were not subversive but elementally human. Each line he made, he said, was “the actual experience” of making the line, adding: “It does not illustrate. It is the sensation of its own realization.” Years later, he described this more plainly. “It’s more like I’m having an experience than making a picture,” he said. The process stood in stark contrast to the detached, effete image that often clung to Mr. Twombly. After completing a work, in a kind of ecstatic state, it was as if the painting existed but he himself barely did anymore: “I usually have to go to bed for a couple of days,” he said.


Art as experience. The joy, the beauty, and often the agony is in the process.  Exhausting as it can be, it is what makes us artists, and human.