Cities at night

And ghosts

Did a couple different sort of drawings this week, ghosts pursuing drivers at night and some kind of city night walker.

These drawings are probably more reflective of my “real” life," meaning life in a big concrete city,¹ and also more in line with the times maybe? So many things feel despairing and soulless right now, with artifice and plastic everywhere, in the faces and the culture. But that’s not really where my imagination goes to rest. And also of course it’s not actually the truth! So many people and things are absolutely the opposite, vibrant and bursting with spirit. In my own life, my balcony container garden has gotten underway for the season. And my almost 5-year-old daughter has fallen in love with drawing after not showing any particular interest before. Every day she fills pages and pages, a constant churn of creation and creativity. Here is a drawing she made yesterday, of herself and her grandpa building a fire upstate which they often do together.

Grandpa is the figure on the left with the gray hair, the fire is on the right, and the rectangles in the middle are stacks of firewood. The large green-topped rectangles are trees with smiling faces.

I also filled pages and pages with my stories and drawings when I was small. And, obviously, I still do. And it looks like I always will! All by way of saying, the drawings I posted today were very fun to work on, but I’ll probably go back to my leafy green tree subjects sooner rather than later.

1. Although I live in a comparatively leafy green corner of it (i.e. Astoria, Queens)