The body knows the truth.
Home sits in your view,
bearing fruit unknown,
waiting beck and call,
asking for a seat.
The body keeps the score.
Keeping paths aligned,
every motion counts,
leaving faster scars,
waiting for the lore.
The body waits for rest.
Barren skin to air
paused within the light
left behind, the door
open to the moon.
I drew each of these some time in grad school on a Wacom Bamboo using GIMP back before I got CSP and my current tablet. This must have been before covid. It wasn't until 2022 that I started focusing on learning how to draw classic-style anime art, and it was also before I started intentionally rounding out and studying art fundamentals (
evidence).
I've been heavily inspired by Alfons Mucha, Bernini, and Japanese aesthetic principles. But my main inspiration was some feeling I've had as a kid. When I was in my teens and developing a sense of aesthetic style, I kept returning back to the idea of works crafted such that you can keep returning to them over and over and discover something new. I was especially inspired by things that were placed just-so, in a way that plays with convention to the point of defying it. I felt like this defiance creates an endless conversation between a piece and the viewer. The closest concept in the world I've found is yuugen, a profound and mysterious underlying beauty. But I call this endless beauty "eternality".
To me, eternality is the beautiful pain of watching something in contrast. It is painful when something is positioned too far in frame so that it defies the rule of thirds and creates a sense of discomfort and longing. It is astonishing when something is posed clumsily off of a golden ratio, like a deity falling out of line.
This art reflects some aspect of my deep disconnect with my body, and my sad tendency to substitute the carnal for the divine.
The last drawing references the 1914 photograph of Egon Schiele. The last stanza of the poem references 'The thief left it behind' by Ryokan.
