5.15.22

I show _____ my drawing on FaceTime and she says: I forget you were good at drawing. In my usual manner, I deflect and begin to say something about what I think drawing is. To be good at drawing, I say, all you have to do is draw whatever you see when you see it. It's not about what you see, but how you see it. 

I'm not sure if the things I draw look like their photo references. When drawing, I find I have to pay attention to the spaces between things to differentiate them from each other. Patches of light and dark make it clear when something ends and something else begins.

For instance - 

Those there: those are your fingers. Interlaced with them: mine. Here: a table. In the corner, barely visible: the meal you made for me when we met. Even now I know we are no longer there because the light looks different in my room in New York than it did that night somewhere else. 

It's true then: the dark that separates us is what allows us to be together in the same picture. It's true then: it's important to know what's right in front of me and what's now just out of view.