I think there is a lot to be said for repetition, something being sought after. Much like I don’t believe in art for art’s sake I also don’t believe in the relentless pursuit of the “new.” I guess my choice in how I create my work speaks volumes to that. But we do ourselves a great disservice to think those boring old mantras of “there’s nothing new in art” – it’s total nonsense. People especially think this in figuration. I take great joy in obsessions, mine and those of other artists. It’s revelatory, it’s a thought process, it’s an indicator of what a person finds important or terrifying. It’s how we process the world we are given and the world we create. I could go on and on but instead I present the Clear Wing Butterfly.

“Decapitated Stag” 2011, graphite on Bristol Board, 12″ x 12″

"From the Bodies of Dead Horses" 2011 graphite on Bristol Board, 12" x 12"

“From the Bodies of Dead Horses” 2011, graphite on Bristol board, 12″ x 12″

Want to know what would inspire such madness, as making a drawing with one single pencil?

Allow Charlotte to explain with the No. 2 Pencil song

I love cicadas, they are one of the insects that most fascinate me and stir my imagination.  I grew up in Indiana where August equals a cacophony of cicada songs.  Or, if you prefer, the sounds of an orgy.  That’s really what’s going on.  The fellas are singing for their ladies.

One of my favorite cicada myths is about Eos, the goddess of dawn.  She fell in love with a mortal man — and who could blame her, there are some stunners on this Earth — and she gave him the gift of eternal life.  But as all such goddess-in-love-with-a-mortal stories go, she forgot to grant a crucial element: eternal youth.  And so he aged, and shrank, into a cicada and sang out his love for her every day.

This particular cicada is found nowhere near Indiana.  He’s a tropical guy from, I think, Singapore.  The skull on his back is a warning to potential predators that he’s either poison or really icky tasting, or both.  Yet above the skull he has a tiny misshapen heart.  And just below the skull are his tymbal covers.  Tymbals are the cicada’s noise makers – a pair of ribbed membranes located on either side of the first abdominal tergite.  The covers are platelike anterior projections of the second abdominal tergite.  But I digress…to me his tymbal covers resemble the Irish Claddagh, the traditional symbol and love token or wedding ring from Ireland.   The Claddagh has its origins from the town of the same name just outside of Galway, in the area where one of my family surnames originates and was first introduced after the Norman invasion.  If there is one trait we share with insects it’s a proclivity toward violence, and in the interest of sex we most assuredly share this tendency.  Yet the heart, misshapen as it may be, remains…

graphite on bristol board
2010
Started this the week after my dad died, no title, and may remain that way forever, not sure.
He loved hummingbirds and one of my fondest adult memories of him was from last summer, we sat outside and he told me the life story of this green hummingbird that lived in the neighboring yard.  That hummingbird was emerald green.

This is the only actually gray hummingbird in real life, but it has this subtle lavender on the interior five feathers in the center of the wing (bird wings are divided into 3 parts, in this bird of 5 feathers each). His legs are tucked up inside his feathers and the little pouf on his abdomen are the legs, tucked. The long tail feathers are WHITE WHITE WHITE in life, but you know in drawings you have some limitations…

Graphite drawing of lady with golden nipples is nearly done!  Woo-hoo – next up: a waist level carnival on a golden platform.  I do hate to be such a tease, however I won’t publish photos until I get them shot by a real pro because my art photos are not so great.