P’u: Pages From Coloring Book
2004
Thinking about how we as humans develop specific responses to stimuli based on our instinctual and procedural memory led to a questioning about my own originality and uniqueness. Inspired by some interesting readings, I began thinking about how what seems to make the human race dynamic is the limitations of social memory, that we forget and generationally have to relearn and directly experience everything ourselves. So, in my opinion, originality and creativity become a rediscovery of some latent imagery within the social collective.
The notions of rediscovery began to intrigue me and I began doodling using some random gestures I happened to have sitting around as reference, something previously created with feverish intensity and subsequently forgotten. Quite possibly, this could be considered meaningless doodling, yet I feel that doodling is closer to the innocent, unpolished state of creativity, untainted by conceptions of tutelage and procedural memory. Somehow, this analysis of unrelated information constitutes something closer to originality.
P’u is a total of three drawings, each on a 64 x 48 in. piece of 500 lbs. watercolor paper. The drawing was rendered in pen and pencial and then worked back into with markers, watercolor and acrylic.