Archive for the ‘drawing’ tag
Stopping to observe
It is Thanksgiving and I am in Kaua’i with my family. This morning I went on a run alone through the brush, past herds of chickens, and down a steep hill to the beach. When I arrived, I did something that my family used to do a long time ago when we were children but stopped doing–either because we got older or maybe because we all got into running and other endurance sports and started to take our heart rates so seriously:
I stopped.
I strolled around. I used a stick to examine some small jellyfish with football-like white stitching on them that had washed up onto the beach and died. I sat down in the sand to watch the waves. I observed. I breathed in the way the waves came in diagonal sections of brown upon the shore and behind them, strips of turquoise and behind them, the steel grayish blue of rain clouds. I had brought no camera, no iPhone, no drawing supplies, and so I just watched and took the time and love to etch into my memory what I was seeing.
This doesn’t sound like much, but it has become sort of an axiom about being a Norton-Cruz that we are always running around and doing or learning, and that when we are exercising we don’t take breaks. So I am returning to an older Norton-Cruz tradition where we used to explore the tide pools of California and play in the sand. And returning to the Laura that makes art from what she loves. So this is what I made, upon returning to the house:
