Storied Paper

The beautiful soft black line of the charcoaled half-burned twig, the luscious red stain of the smashed berries, the powdery golden glow of the ochre clay earth – all came together on the stone walls to charm the day, record the event, and note the present.

But the stone could not be carried in migration and the stone could not be given in exchange; the stone could not be kept from alteration nor from degradation. And the stone could not be private or shared selectively.

But the animal hide could be rolled and carried. The surface was supple and absorbent. And then the smaller the animal, the thinner the skin. Scraped of hair and burnished to a glowing translucence, the parchment gave pigments an inner light, a depth and magical presence.

It was a long and demanding process from the hunt to the palette. A precious sheet on which to execute the most sacred of text or image. So paper from plant brought abundance – from pulp or cloth or mixture of fibers – making this supple and durable support to be taken in hand.

In this storied paper, artists have picked up small pieces of paper, large sheets of paper, pieced-together pieces of paper. The paper is the support for the silky charcoal of willow or grape vines or the rich oily black of compressed charcoal. It is the support for the earth pigments of chalks as it is for the powdery pigments of watercolor. It is the support for the inky black of lamp soot and the slick and shiny brilliance of oil pastel. Paper grasps the pigment with its fibers, it opens its pores to the fluid dye.

It is here on the seemingly endless supply of paper that the hand moves. Slowly, quickly, in concentric circles, in parallel lines, in fits and starts, digging in, gliding over, with even pace, with focused centrality – the hand moves as the thoughts tumble and spin. The marks across the paper record the visible and the imagined, the remembered and the dreamt. The fragments of thought and vision take form. They are readily altered, abandoned, revisited, revised, re-imagined, reconfigured. The images flow quickly, the images are built with measured plotting. Where we have been, what we have seen, how we have felt, who we are and what we want to hold close – all of this and the yet-unnamed speak across the surface of paper.