Post # 190 Ninety-Nine Faces on the Wall

You all remember the old camp bus song, “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”, well, several months ago, for some totally inexplicable reason, I began to obsessively draw faces. all kinds. old, young, pretty, not-so-pretty, men, women, etc. I think I stopped around the 99^th. Although I always started out with a real person whose photo I cut out of a magazine or newspaper, the finished portrait never had the slightest resemblance to it. It was as if my hand was no longer in charge and the face in front of me had acquired a life of its own. This went on for several weeks at which point I exhausted both myself and my paper supply, ending up in bed with some kind of puzzling flu that required over a week to get over.

The process by which I produced this Rogue’s Gallery of faces was pretty weird in itself. I would cut interesting subjects from the local newspaper, or the New York Times and begin to sketch them on soft newsprint paper with a pencil or piece of charcoal. That was when the magic took place; the image on the paper would take over and I was no longer in control of what I was drawing. The face in front of me bore no resemblance to the photo I was looking at. Someone or something else was now in charge.

Day after day new faces appeared. My studio walls became obsessively covered with them. When I ran out of wall space, I brought down huge sheets of triple ply cardboard from the attic and covered them, front and back with faces. I finally exhausted both my paper supply and my well-being, ending up in bed for over a week with a strange flu. I’m lucky it was only my health and not my sanity.

I wish I could explain what happened, but I can’t. It was as if I had been consumed by pandemic loneliness and a need for “company” and my subconscious mind responded by creating its own crowd.