Drawing is possibly the most fun I can ever have in this life. Sure, I’ve had tons of fun painting, but never as much as I have had while drawing. Drawing is like breathing, just so natural.
Occasionally, an idea for a piece comes out of left field and I just have to deal with it. This was one of those. I was researching the Kabbalah because I find ancient esoteric belief systems to be fascinating and I became quite interested with this complex system which breaks the Judaic godhead into 13 separate anthropomorphic modes of YHWH. Each facet has attributes that act to call forth or repel psychic energy and or the physical world. Some create, some destroy. It’s like a Jewish Astrology chart.
Gevurah, the 5th node on the sephirah (tree), is associated with judgement and punishment of wickedness, stringency of justice, the letter of the law, restraint, and separation. And also fire. I liked that it might also mean revenge— and I’d originally planned to make this a sibling piece to some of my other work that I’d informally lumped together as my “revenge series”. It never made it to the painting stage, but perhaps that doesn’t matter.
As I read more about this mode, I day-dreamt of hornets; their fiery sting and the added cultural attachment of anger and madness seemed appropriate for the image.
In the past decade or more, I’ve employed the motif of “multiples” in some of my work. A group of individuals acting in tandem to complete a task, move about, etc., means that individuals tend to lose their atomic-ness. And yet, we know that they still have some kind of agency (noticing the ones that go off on their own). Throughout history, women have been anonymous forces, often working together to achieve goals for the betterment of the whole. An individual rarely stands out. Visually, the multitude appears as one entity. Fluid dynamics in effect.
A note about technique: I used powdered graphite and a soft brush to get the larger deep black areas in this drawing. Graphite can become shiny if it’s repeatedly burnished, but the powdered graphite just imbricates itself into the paper fiber and gets darker. Working flat allows for more control of application.
I’d love to hear your comments on the work and answer any questions you may have.