Matt Duckett

Thanks to anyone who has voted in the Pfister Artist in Residence poll on Facebook (here and here).  If you don't have facebook, you can send an email to: amyhansen@marcuscorp.com.  Just throw Artist in Residence Vote and Matt Duckett in the subject, and that should be fine.

Here are a couple more pieces I've done over the last few months. I told myself I'd keep on top of this blog a little better than before, and here's the next batch of work.  These are a couple drawings I did last fall.

 

 

Cave Man, charcoal and graphite.

 This self-portrait was for a drawing show, so I wanted it to be as much about the act of drawing as it was about me.  For a self-portrait, I went back to a park where I spent quite a lot of time as a child.  But the imagery really is a commentary of drawing itself.  The large steel doors behind me had hundreds of dents in them, both tiny and quite impressively deep.  The deepest seemed to form the initials 'RS,' visible over my shoulders.  Maybe it's because I was there in a particularly introspective mood, but the act of marking a place with initials seemed to parallel those prehistoric cave drawings. They both seemed to say "I was here.  I did this."  They are both a record of experiencing a particular place and time.  I picked up a rock and scrawled my own initials on the concrete.  I remember using rocks to draw on sidewalks being a somewhat earth-shattering discovery as a kid.  I wrote my initials to say that I, too, had been there.

All of this is captured in my own record of the experience, using graphite and charcoal.  I wanted to stack these frames of experience on top of each other, and see drawing—basically mark-making on any level—as a rather vain attempt to capture the act of being present, a small moment in time made nearly permanent with rocks and sticks.
 

Portrait of Frances, graphite and charcoal

This is a drawing of our friend Fran, who just gave birth to a beautiful little daughter.  Though this was done months ago, I suppose it makes this a double portrait.