Before I leave the house for the day, to show New York to friends in town from Toronto, let me post two Hand Drawings on shikishi paper. They are bigger than the Lilies and were drawn in September of 2001. A friend had sent me a little hand cut out and I tried to make a drawing similar to that. The two hands are now a diptych and yes, they are two very different drawings. The original size of each is 27x24cm, so they are not very big, just very labor intensive pieces.
The first hand is oddly enough a 2 hour drawing, the second hand is a 4 hour drawing.
How come they can't touch?
This might sound strange, but I thought that they would be much more connected if they were never allowed to touch. Were they drawn in one image, they would be just trapped in the same gesture forever. Their relationship to each other could never be altered. By using two images, their relationship level will always fluctuate. They might be physically separated, they might take different positions relatively to each other, but their idea will always keep them united. Their separated state however allows them to still be individual pictures, as they were completed separately, with a beginning and an ending of the process. I think it sometimes can be more interesting to have two individual pictures that are united through an idea than to have one image with two ideas that are not completely thought out.
Oh, thank you... they do have a very nice quality to them in person. : )