There are things that maybe shouldn’t lend themselves to statements. Or should they? It’s a rich internet out there. We need to be worthy of the best of it. Those good people who peruse its contents and our own place therein. Maybe they deserve a kind of affirmation. For us creators to take the trouble to help these good people out a bit, to figure out why we’re here with our stuff and to share.

My speciality pencil is the Eagle Verithin Black. I’m looking at a series of these in a row. The deep, rich almost timeless blacks in their varnish send me into a sort of reverie. The real reverie in an afternoon light that opens the texture of the board, giving each tiny dollop of pigment the means to act on the image even as it jumps out at you. It’s a production aid.

You kind of live for it though, build your art around it and know that the feeling will come through for the viewer. That’s the stock in trade. We’re talking terra cotta, tuscan red and the ochers. When the membrane of lights and darks, when the the forms coming through seems real, that’s when I release. 

Ray Maier, 2014