DESIREE WARREN
As a student, I was bad at drawing, and I didn’t like to do it. I don’t know which caused the other, but I only drew to get a class credit or sketch out something to build. When looking around at my peers and their natural abilities, my confidence withered like a raisin. So I didn’t draw for fifteen years…until February 2020.
One day I got an idea-flash of making very large images of flowers. In order to make this a reality I needed to learn—relearn, as an adult—how to draw. Being frugal, I kept all my art supplies from college, so I pulled out some nearly twenty-year-old newsprint and went at it. I painted and repainted over my practice sketches with old house paint, not wanting to waste stacks of paper. Some lines from the previous drawings showed through, and the rough edges and paint strokes added texture and history.
Maturity helped me get over my aversion to not making a “perfect” representation and accept my slight wonkiness and innate style. Time had marinated the lessons I managed to learn in drawing class, and to my surprise, I started to really enjoy the whole experience. I liked the meandering qualities of the brushed lines, subtleties of thick and thin curves and a little wiggle here and there, showing my hand and giving clues about how this piece of work was produced. I use detail brushes and India ink on painted paper most of the time. And recently I started using the same technique, only with underglaze, to add surface decoration to hand-built ceramics.
I happened to choose nature, and specifically flowers and vines, as my subject matter, right when I needed to see the power of nature the most: the Covid 19 pandemic was upon us. Coinciding with spring, as the human world shut down, the natural world began to open up. Everyday I’d walk my very small yard, checking out which weeds and flowers first started to grow. Did my random scattering of seeds or strange vacant-lot transplants take root from the year before? As we were hunkering down in an uncertain time, I explored my tiny slice of safety. I only draw from photos I’ve taken, and am especially fond of new botanical discoveries that I’m ashamed to say it took me this long to learn about, both around the city and my childhood country home. When you don’t have much choice, it’s best to grow where you’re planted and dig those roots deeper.
