talking heads Print

I am a TV writer living in Los Angeles. I have written three books, made an indie movie, and written for various magazines and websites on contemporary culture, politics, and religion. Art and photography have always been passions for me. These drawings are accidental flights of fantasy – spontaneous, right brain meanderings with a mind of their own. I started drawing in TV writers’ rooms. During rewrites I would doodle on my script pages, either to keep my mind alive or to keep my head from exploding. Anyone who’s been in a room at midnight, staring at a sea of blank faces all searching for the same insight, knows this experience. Most of the drawings were tossed out at the end of the night, along with stacks of cold pizza but, occasionally, one would take on a distinct character, or style, or evoke a mood or emotion. Those were interesting enough to keep, and eventually enough of an incentive to buy sketch pads and pens, and pursue it outside of work. I’m not an artist. Having read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and taken some art classes, I knew the trick was to draw without trying to draw -- to let go of any desire for a specific result and just let it happen. The “not-do- ing” of it became an interesting exercise. If I let go, it occasionally went somewhere interesting. If I got too deliberate, the results were forced. Sometimes, when I felt stuck in a familiar pattern, I’d try to break out of my head by taking a different color pen, and attacking the page randomly. Once in a while, I got in the zone. Though, as with all attempts at mindlessness, once you become aware of it, it’s gone. Of all the drawings I’ve done to date, these faces seemed to express a unique attitude or emotion. I then added captions in an attempt to capture or enhance the mood. Whether there’s anything Freudian going on in the darker images, I have no idea. Regarding the photographs I've taken, some go back to a demonstration in Harrisburg, PA in the early '70s. Others were taken on the streets of LA.