The Pencil is the most versatile instrument an artist can hold.  It is also the most personal, the most intimate, the most self-revealing.  A Pencil drawing is also more deliberate: the unconscious was there with the idea that came before the drawing, but not in the execution; this is why a Pencil drawing is more personal, more chosen, why there is more frankness in it.  There is no cheating with a pencil.  Colour is unneccesary because it can be implied. A Pencil drawing is not a sketch preparing for something 'more important'.  It is not a rehearsal for the big event.  The Pencil drawing is the true, unguarded performance.  It itself is the idea, best expressed with the wand, the mighty stick, the greatest tool ever devised by man: the humble Pencil. Many artists down the centuries have bewailed the fact that paintings are more valued than Pencil drawings, because they all knew what has just been said above to be true: that it is possible to say more in a Pencil drawing than in any other medium.  This page will be an archive and ongoing record of my works in Pencil, starting with a selection of drawings made on a coast-to-coast journey across Canada this Spring, and other pencils done in 2003. Next is a miscellany of pencils done in previous quarter century.  Also on this page is a collection of the drawings I have made featuring Jesus over the past twenty-five years:  In the beginning was the word, then came the Pencil.  Another sequence of drawings tells the story of Samson. From time to time special assignments and 'essays in pencils' will appear here, like the one on SPEED below.

click on a picture to see it full-size with its accompanying text

SPEED An essay in pencils.

Northern Lights, 2003	Northern Lights, 2003	Big Dog in Truck, 2003	Big Dog in Truck, 2003
Mahone Bay Winter, 2003	Montreal Winter, 2003	Rockies Winter, 2003	Discussing the War, 2003
In the Dumpster, 2003	False Creek Ferry, 2003	Girl & Dog Boating, 2003	Vancouver Baker, 2003
Canadian cakes, 2003	Toffee apple emporium, 2003	Her bun is alive, 2003	Confiscating horses, 2003
Empty amusement park, 2003	Park workers, 2003	Powerful, 2003	Trash bin maestro, 2003
The disgruntled millionaire, 2003	The disgruntled millionaire, 2003	French baker, 2003	Dinkum digger, 2003
The brioche man, 2003	3 eyes, 7 legs. 2003	Adventure man, 2003	Teacher's breakdown, 2003
The lost brick, 2003	Wolves howling, 2003	Travelling serial killer, 2003	Fixing pylon 2, 2003
Boss comes down, 2003	Gateshead butchers, 2003	Snow-plough, 2003	Brave dog, 2003

 
His 100th Christmas, 2003

Pencils 1977-2002 A miscellany of pencils from the last 25 years.

Jesus Pencil drawings illustrating the story of Jesus. These drawings have been made during the last quarter century.  In that time I have never drawn an integrated Life of Jesus sequence, because this would tie down my ideas about Jesus and the events of his life.  Instead, I have returned to the same scenes again and again, with a freedom to make many different Jesuses, an ever-changing dialogue between my Pencils and the gospels.

Samson This sequence was drawn in 1977, the year of my first one-man show, when I was 20 years old.  It happens that I have, then and now, exactly the same physical measurements as Victor Mature, who played Samson in the de Mille movie.  So the story of this complex, flawed Hercules has always had special relevance for me.  I never drew the final act of Samson's passion, where he pushed down the pillar and destroyed the Philistines.  It did not seem right, not a true victory, as all enemies could never be extinguished; and this idea seems yet more apt today in the Middle East, after twenty-five more years of bloodshed and a malice unextinguishable by strength or victory.  So Samson is left in prison, blind and beaten, awaiting a better day or nothing at all.

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