Haptic: Dubuffet [16 x 20"; oil pastels]
When I make marks, as a working poet, I imagine I work in the way a poet would paint. As in the case of “Dubuffet” [the work shown here] I approach each stroke as I would a syllable, or an accent or a consonant. It is, I assume, my way to inhabit, to live within the space of the drawing surface what one part of me sees/experiences as a page, as if the work is part of a conversation with the substance, the materiality of the paper; I work this space – as I would a poem – in which the paper is a potential, continuous field of rhythm, of color, of and a delight in its resistances, its choices, and a humility, as if the pens are having a conversation with God, or a series of gods, some who dance, who play, who challenge, sometimes darkly and seriously, ones, for example, who pull the oil pastel crayon in a dark descent or a luminous one; who make each new space, each field, into a journey, a way in, a way out – much the way in which a book unfolds – this forest of marks, living – indeed, its entirety, an extended conversation.
(further thought)
I call the piece “Dubuffet” not that it looks like what might be commonly called “a Dubuffet”, but more as an homage to Dubuffet’s kind of attention to color, to materiality, to going inside to bring up whatever is inside me or collectively “us” to create marks that correspond to the heat, the velocity, the shapes, forces and colors of a cosmos that is both internal and external. Actually, when I step back and look at this piece, the spiraling black ‘rib’ lines appear to barely contain (encase) while at the same time heighten the centrifugal force of the color bearing marks.
Haptic: Dubuffet [detail]
I remember first seeing Dubuffet’s work on posters announcing shows in Paris in 1960-61. I was 19 year old student and living on the Isle St. Louis; the posters energized the streets, as well as provided me with some kind dearly needed beacon during those days in which Paris was politically fraught by Algeria’s war of independence from France’s colonial power. Demonstrations, often violent, were common. Rifle toting policemen in full riot gear controlled street corners,, government building facades and gates to the homes of politicians. Dubuffet’s bold colors & strokes practically taunted all that was worn out in the gray, repressive & repugnant colonial palette. Young, much lost and confused, it was exactly what I craved. If this piece, “Dubuffet”, carries any of that force into these times, I am grateful. If you find it “beautiful” or ” successful”, I am grateful for that, too.



















