VISUAL ART | ISSUE SIX
Drawing the Psychodrama
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With a statement from the artist and an essay by Robyn O'Neil
Brother Colubris, Ink and watercolor on paper, 21 x 29 inches, 2014
Lee Baxter Davis was my drawing professor in the 90’s at East Texas State University. He taught me how to draw air. DRAW AIR. Can you imagine? And you want to know how he described this assignment to our basic drawing class? He walked into the classroom and said, “Get out a piece of paper and draw AIR.” Even the strongest students were puzzled. I thought the assignment was utterly insane. We all did our best. I pushed graphite around with a Kleenex; another kid dropped blobs of ink everywhere. Each drawing was an eerily accurate description of our individual undergraduate psyches.* In the end, drawing air made me aware of subtlety, atmosphere, and mood. And how a piece of paper can be a heaven. Plain and simple, I also know this assignment is what turned me into a real artist. That’s the thing about having had Lee as a professor. There’s a hell of a lot of being baffled. And I thank the universe forcefully for getting to be his student, for realizing again and again that the slow burn of confused learning is the biggest gift I’ve received as an artist. There is striving in being confused. There is an itch to it. When information is neatly given, well, there it is. Solved and comfortable. That’s no good, at least not for artists.
Football Bullies, 27 x 20 inches, Ink and watercolor on paper, 2014
Many of Lee’s students tell stories about the nature of understanding the points he made in class. We end up fully grasping these points a good fifteen years later. Let me be clear, that’s a good thing. I’ll be drawing a toenail on the foot of a figure in one of my drawings, and as that little tiny toenail comes to life, I’ll remember Lee teaching us that the key to strong figure drawing is that human feet should look “like lizards, clinging to the Earth.” If that doesn’t make sense yet, how one’s entire stability on this planet can be likened to a reptile’s desperate claws in desert dirt, give it a while.
Oaken Delivery, Ink, watercolor and
collage on paper, 37 x 30.5 inches, 2002
He also saw us. I mean really, really saw us. Lee had the uncanny ability to watch the way we shaded our still lifes, and based on the particulars of our shadows, he would know whether we preferred a vacation on the beach or a cabin in the woods. I doubt there is another artist out there who has clocked more drawing hours than Lee. If he has a free 45 seconds, Lee puts pencil to paper. This mind-boggling amount of time spent rendering has given him the power to decipher human emotion in line, history in form, and spirituality in shading. He once looked at a watercolor I painted of human heads floating above a mountainscape, paused, then looked at me and said, “So, you’re Catholic, huh?” Wide-eyed, I replied, “uhhhh yes.” **
Crown of Thorns, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8 x 5 inches, 2009
Gold and Silver, Ink wash and collage on paper, 11.5 x 13.5 inches, 2014
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Here’s the deal. All of those times Lee stumped us, he knew exactly what he was doing. It was a strategic and genius way to unlock crucial parts of students that would never have seen the light of day otherwise. Lee Baxter Davis is gifted in ways the world hasn’t seen since William Blake.
Although I’ve known the man over twenty years now, it still doesn’t quite register that he’s real. Lee is devotion. Every ounce of this man is full with it. Devotion to life, death, family, history, his church, to the emotional and psychological power of image-making, to desire, and perhaps best of all, to wonder. I bear witness to this human phenomenon. And long may he roam. -Robyn O'Neil |
Odyssus in Austria, Ink and watercolor on paper, 30 x 24 inches, 2005
Sleeping lightly, hearing a rustling sound, she woke up. Eyes open, there stands Hephaistos with his ax, saying, “I would urge you to give up everything.”
The earliest drawings I remember doing were at the age of five. I was attending church services with my Momma and she gave me a notepad and pencil to keep me occupied. I was not without models when I began to draw, having seen my Pappa’s doodles of running chickens. Ah, the lines on clean paper dancing before the backdrop of mythical romanticism and Momma chopping off the head of a hen for Sunday dinner.
Death of Fr. O, Pen, ink, and watercolor on paper, 20 x 20 inches, 1994
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From very early on, my eyes began to see in figurative duddles; not just of things to name (chickens), but of hens running, hell-bent on keeping their heads. In the shaping of images, you can uncover primitive abstractions that are at the heart of the senses.
Alea iacta est [the die is cast] There is falling upon the human a stupor, a mirage of enchantment and hymeneal deception. Once the dice has been thrown, we are urged to sing a hymn of imagination. Herein is the model of the psychological drawing: a persona[s], a place and an event, illustrating a clumsy reality. The tonsured monk sits in his little boat hoping to make the night sea crossing. The heart is a hand grenade that, when pulled from our chest, wants to be thrown in defiance against the target of our mortality. |
Sideshow, Pen, ink, watercolor and collage on paper, 28 x 20.5 inches, 2006
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Der Weitgeist, Ink wash and collage on paper, 34 x 36 inches, 2005
The art of rendering, as such, is an act of throwing the dice of the little ditch of extinction.
Sitting as I do in the back pew, I doodle - inducting images that consumate the untamable sky and the “feardaemons” of the earth.
Eve looks closely at the master craftsman, Hephaistos. Hands on her virtuous hips, she says, “Get lost, Old Man!” She walks away, the silver apple tucked nicely in her non-existent hip pocket. Hephaistos stands confounded, the very portrait of antique melancholy.
Sitting as I do in the back pew, I doodle - inducting images that consumate the untamable sky and the “feardaemons” of the earth.
Eve looks closely at the master craftsman, Hephaistos. Hands on her virtuous hips, she says, “Get lost, Old Man!” She walks away, the silver apple tucked nicely in her non-existent hip pocket. Hephaistos stands confounded, the very portrait of antique melancholy.
-Lee Baxter Davis
Sniper School, Ink and watercolor on paper, 42 x 40 inches, 2014
* Lee is the only person in the history of the world who has ever given this assignment.
** I now have the same ability to decipher whether or not a person was raised Catholic based on the nature of their drawing. And if you doubt this, test me. I dare you.
** I now have the same ability to decipher whether or not a person was raised Catholic based on the nature of their drawing. And if you doubt this, test me. I dare you.
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Lee Baxter Davis was born in Bryan, Texas in 1939. He’s ordained to the Permanent Order of Catholic deacons and resides with his wife near Greenville, Texas. |
Nat. Brut Issue Six
Issue Six is our second in print, and features work by Cristina de Middel, Afabwaje Kurian, Chitra Ganesh, Jayson Musson, and more! Issue Six also comes with limited edition supplements: All of Them Witches, a 32-page risograph-printed comic re-interpreting 1950s Harvey Horror comics, plus volume four of our comics section, Early Edition!