I wish it to be known why I use the medium of ink to create my art.

For many long years, I painted with oils. Focusing with intent on subject matter with a realism we are all familiar with and relate to in our personal experience. However, now, the pen is more handy for me than painting.

With a pen, there is a flow. With a pen, there is no clean-up as with paint, and there is certainly no tediousness … indeed there is a timelessness. With the fine point of a pen, multi-affects may be visualized. There can be surprise, discovery, and inventiveness. And, in my art, no monotonous design!

Now I approach my art in a different manner than I did in the past. Subject matter, or things which we are all familiar with remain and comes partly from memory.

However, as I draw, in a randomized sort of way, and like in a dream, unforeseen images appear consciously. Dependent on this unconsciousness, as with dreams, or imagination as some people call it, the artist is faced with the unpredictable until an image pops out. That’s it, this is what it means … and after all, much better than I could have thought up, and certainly a lot more fun!

Like in dreams, the images may be a mystery. The whole unconscious is a mystery to most of us. Like the unconscious, we can dream up images with our art. Also, as with meditation, we may transcend beyond the ordinary when we create art … making art as a whole; The great “I am that … I am.”

There is a ceaseless flow of imagery, and with such spirit, things don’t matter, for detail, memory, etc., are part of the whole, and all-embracing.

~ Carolyn Bertrand Hodges