Monday, September 7, 2009

San Lazaro District, Arequipa, Peru

The only observed drawing I produced on this trip. But it was a pleasant couple of hours of unrushed meditative doodling on a day when life gives you what you want for a few hours, squeezed between uncertainty and frenzy of surviving without direction on some arbitrary spot on the globe that has solidified into your habits and fears in an imprint that's hard to wash off. Sometimes life gives you a restful morning, an embrace of sunshine, a destination for the flailing strain of survival. This rare calm is in this piece. A privilege to simply breathe and draw, without that dire need to express anything in particular, to capture, to define, to expel, to conquer. I happened to be on a street of a South American desert town in the summer of 2009. How long will this town stand? How long will the street stay unaltered? How long will I? I may have gone out of an unreasoned turmoil that a beating heart can cause in a meticulous mind, but what I have to show for it all is just this sketch of a few moments of tenderness I shared with the harsh Arequipan sun. An achievement somewhere in between dedication and an accident.