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As an artist I’m impatient and drawn to discovery. You can decide if that’s a pun or not, but sometimes I feel like I can’t shake the images out of the pen fast enough. I think that is part of why I’m so drawn to working with very immediate and unforgiving materials. I don’t render. I splat and swoop and scratch. It’s not that I aspire to the visceral bombast of a Steadman, it’s just that the moments when the flow happens can be fleeting and when they arrive I don’t want anything to get in the way. Preciousness and overworking the image are for me the insecurities of the ego, trying to assert control instead of staying out of the way. I’ve learned that my muse is not frightened by loud noises, clumsy strokes or dark smudges, but she will not suffer a harness. She does not gnash or bite she simply evaporates, ceding the ground to the silly man with the pen who presumes to know better.

Mocking Bird

bristled
bent feathers
gray-grimed broken bird

eye turned to the sky

claw and beak
scratching dried worms
a rancid feast

and she looks to the sky

flit-flap
the tattoo of pain-dancing
on searing tar

and she sings “I was born for the sky”

mock freedom
flying on crushed wings
mocks the sky

mocks us all

by David Cohen