Three Brothers

Matt and Jeff are my two best friends. This weekend, we're getting together to take The Old Man out for a much belated Father's Day gift to the Jack Stack BBQ. I smile at the prospect of this and find that I'm just as excited about the fellowship as I am the barbecued carcass that will eventually lie before me. And I know that they feel the same way.

The explanation for the drawing above is not as simple as it appears to be. For the past several years, I've been obsessed with the line-drawn studies of Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee. Picasso, who had grown to be an accomplished artist throughout his career, found that he had advanced enough as an artist and began to study the simple line drawings of young school children. I always found the artwork of young people to be quite fascinating and one of my main reasons for returning to school in order to work with them. There's something very innocent and primitive about the artwork of a person who can only mimic what they see, but not yet possess the skill to "properly" execute it. Even more important is that we are all artists, but it's not until we reach a certain age or social status where we lose sight of this. Any trained artist could tell you how hard it is to return to your inner-child and try to create premature work such as this. Putting away all of life's experiences and getting to the core of a young observer of life is so much harder than it looks or sounds. But it wasn't until I read the biography of Paul Klee, by Gualteiri Di San Lazzaro, that I began the studies for "Three Brothers," which is is a series of line drawings done in a similar fashion to the one above. Whether or not it's ever meant to become a painting or a print remains to be seen. The idea stems from something Lisa says to people. When someone who's never met Matt or Jeff asks how different or similar the three of us are, Lisa tells them that "Mark is a little like Matt, and a little like Jeff. But Matt and Jeff are like night and day." And it's true. People who meet Matt and Jeff have a hard time believing that they're brothers. I'd like to think I'm the link that holds the three of us together. If you look at the line drawing above, chances are you can find me in the middle.