On Nature: Cut Words

These drawings are selections from an ongoing series: I’m working out a visual form of haiku. I am inspired by haiku's brevity, attention to nature, and sense of peace. My drawings depict plants or animals in compositions that feel simple and quiet. I encode the seasons through my choice of ink color: black for summer, Payne's gray for winter, walnut for fall, raw sienna for spring. Many of the drawings use panels to echo the pauses created by the kireji (“cutting words”) found in haiku. In Japanese kireji are a special category of words, but in English, the idea is often represented by punctuation, like em dashes or colons. This is seen in this haiku by American author Richard Wright (who spent the last eighteen months of his life writing thousands of haiku): I am nobody: A red sinking autumn sun Took my name away.