During my last art crit, my pixel mentor recommended that I make some more efforts of working on my trunk; to "create what most speaks through you, and honor it as a complete work of art that adds purpose to the world, and isn't just humbly another study".

Well, this piece is my attempt at doing that. 

 

One of my most vivid memories is from a diner called Jo's Place on Pender Island. It was day four or five of our honeymoon, I don't quite recall. But I know it must have been a Sunday because we had the roast beef special and the diner only made that on Sundays. Jo's Place was the only real option if you didn't want to make your own breakfast, so we'd been a few times earlier in the week, and it didn't take much advertising to convince us to make Sunday night reservations. Driving around Pender Island is a real treat because of how beautiful it is, and with a sparse population you hardly ever see any other cars on the roads, except for on the only-big-enough-for-one-car bridge where we'd always seem to meet up with every car on the island.

 

Anyways, I was reaching out to take a sip of whatever I was drinking and experienced a strange sensation. Actually, I'd been feeling it throughout our stay on Pender, but there's something about this particular time which stands out in my memory. Well, it doesn't really "stand out", mind you. There are only a few occasions which I can visualize at all from my life, so its mere existence makes it stand out.

 

I have memories, of course, I just can't look at them, generally. And when I can look at them, it's never from my own perspective. When I say that I remember reaching out, I really mean that I can visualize someone reaching out, and I know that someone was me. I talked to my dad about this, once, and it turned out that he can't visualize any of his memories at all.  My mom can visualize all of her memories. My son can, too, as can my wife. I never got the chance to ask my paternal grandfather.

 

The cup was a lot heavier than it should have been. That was the sensation. Surprised, the person that I know was me puts the glass down and looks at his hand. He looks at his hand in the particular way that he has always looked at his hand. Palm up, fingers curled in that specific way. He's not really looking at his hand at all.

 

He's looking at the weight of a fresh promise, reified by the ring -- the first ring he has ever worn.

 

Well, the hand you see in this picture is 8 years older and the ring has some scuff marks that it didn't have when I first put it on. It's always had those cracks, though: they're part of the original design. The perspective of this image is not the one from my visual memory, and for a particular reason.

 

The line art of this drawing was made via a technique whereby I never took my eyes off my hand. As I move my eyes slowly along the character of my hand, I attempt to also move my digital pen along those same contours on the canvas. The result is far from anatomically correct, but represents the purest form of my way of seeing that I am capable of. Due to the nature of pixel art I allowed myself to fix the shapes of the lines, but I tried to maintained the purity of those original shapes.

 

I'm not so sure that it adds any purpose to the world, but I know that this art speaks through me in the most raw and vulnerable way possible and I think it transcends the humble study, and uhhh.. if you're still reading this, I guess thank you for that and have a great day.