When reading through the titles of the posts on my blog it won’t take long to find the musical influences on my artwork.
My dad shared a lot of really great music with me while I grew up. We went on a lot of camping trips all of which involved a good ol’ fashioned road trip.
These trips are where I heard Bob Dylan’s music for the first time. Between Frank Zappa albums and NPR shows like Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion.
Dylan’s lyrics stick to my brain like glue, and climb out of my head to help me reference and sort out trials in my personal life and the world around me.
The end of a doomed from the get-go relationship last fall brought me to “It’s all right, don’t think twice”.
Just about any news coverage of violence brings me to “Desolation Row”….”The riot squad is restless, they need somewhere to go”.
That mysterious girl I met in the meadow last month reminds me of the words, “She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back, She can take the dark out of the nighttime, And paint the daytime black.”
She’s an artist, she don’t look back, She can take the dark out of the nighttime, And paint the daytime black.”
Spending days on end working on these drawings furthers the connection some how.
Red-shoulder Hawk.
Zone-tailed Hawk.
From simple to sublime, I connect strongly to his poetry.
While I heard Dylan’s music a lot as a youngster, it was the Grateful Dead who I found as a teenager that brought me closer to Dylan’s work and more importantly his lyrics. Neither Dylan or the Dead will probably win an award for best singing voices, that’s not the point. Though I’m in so position to say so, I’d venture to guess it’s the poetry in the song that is the point.
I listen to a lot of music and I draw a lot of birds. There’s a connection there, but I’m not sure where and I’m not terribly interested in finding out what it is. I just know it works for me.
My goal above all is to share the results of such in some way with the world to give light to a beauty sorely missing in many of our day to day lives.
This will be how I save the world around me, or at least try.
farnco illustrations 