Dec 4, 2020
Fledgling Adult pg93
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
By February I was still free floating between beds and couches as I lacked an apartment. My sales job at the ski shop could support a place to live or substances, but not both. My mother’s patience was finally wearing threadbare from the whirlwind of mess I would randomly show up to create, then leave behind. I tended to see a pile of clothes as the subject for a still life drawing rather than the inconvenience to others it really was. It was time to move on. — From Chapter 4
It is easy to tell this is an early drawing as I sucked at rendering the folds of fabric. Had I studied for a degree in a real art school that might have been different, but I did my four years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (with one weird semester at U of NV, Reno). I was trained in the slip-shod ‘do what you feel’ school, where representation was poo-poo’d. The one exception (and exceptional) professor was Rita Deanin Abbey — a modern classicist who didn’t believe in short cuts to mastery of form and color. Ms. Abbey’s influence was Expressionistic Colorism movement, and she had studied with Sigmund Menkes in New York. Influenced by her training at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts, my favorite professor refused to stress any style or artistic approach over another. Her emphasis was meticulous repetition; a more rigorous path to creating something truly original. Her courses were an intense study of the science of color — both in pigment and light — as advanced by Josef Albers, the father of modern color theory. From her I gained a profound foundation. Rita Abbey also taught life drawing and anatomy. We didn’t get live models until we could draw and name every bone and muscle in a human being.
I graduated with the ability to draw people and color them in… but I couldn’t put clothes on them with any skill. Sketching my mess helped to see how much I really didn’t know… either about how fabric falls in folds, or my own sloppy behavior. Of course I didn’t see it then.
A signed copy of Mernie’s memoir is available at www.etsy.com/listing/839838936
Unsigned copies can be ordered wherever books are sold.
