Queen's Park, and Other Public Spaces


Yesterday’s drawing, from Queen’s Park in Toronto, included people sitting on benches, at a central area in the park with seating around a statue. Most of my other landscape sketches, from Toronto, like the one above, and here in Bloomington, have not included people. It can be a good exercise, sketching from people going about their everyday life. Since people move a lot, and quickly, the artist has to fix a position in mind, and stick to it, put it down on paper before it’s gone. Perhaps I should do more of it.

On the other hand, I do not like to intrude into people’s lives in an unwelcome way. I am often, I might say usually, in a state of mind of wanting to sort things out, and wary of conversation. Perhaps that person across the way is working out a difficult problem, and doesn’t want to be stared at just now. I do want to respect that.

If you don’t want to talk with people, why come to a public park? Why join the paseo at sunset in Madrid?

Some European cities are known for their café culture. But why did Sartre, and others, go to a café to write?

In our fast commercial culture I think it can seem easy to forget that there are forms of communication other than talking. I am thinking about the tendency to direct conversation in a way that is like selling. Convincing, or selling yourself on an idea, or trying to convince someone else. Is conversation often like this? Maybe it's just me.

Thinking about the history of human communication, some online research suggests that language developed around 100,000 years ago. Since homo sapiens (we humans) have been around for 130,000 to 195,000 years, that leaves a significant chunk of pre-linguistic history. Portraying a positive aspect of that early form of experience, to ground our research into the present and the future, seems to hold some power, to me, as an artist.

(See an interesting evolutionary time line here: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Evol/timeline.html )

Anyway, this is a thing that I think sounds nice: peacefully, and perhaps quietly, if you wish, sharing a space with other people. 

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