Pen and Ink Sketches

These are pen and ink drawings, black and white drawings mostly, from sketchbooks going back all the way to my teenage years. Indeed, perhaps the majority of these drawings were executed between 1987 and 1993 (from the time I was 17 until 23). In those early years it was my habit to carry a sketchbook with me everywhere and whenever I felt uncomfortable, socially or otherwise, I would retreat to the sketchbook. Because I felt uncomfortable most of the time, a great deal of drawing got done.

I discovered the German dada/expressionist, George Grosz, and aspired to his expressive line and incisive, sardonic social commentary. However, I also was partial to the New Yorker cartoonist, James Thurber. I was immersing myself in Surrealism and sought to draw things from my unconscious, to do "automatic drawings" in the original spirit of 1920s Surrealism. Drawing requires more physical consciousness than writing. One can be in a disembodied trance and still somehow speak, but to draw you need eye hand coordination.