I AM NOT AN ARTIST

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by Dwight Newton

I'm a musician - my ears took most of my aesthetic sensibility, but I have to try visual art once in a while just to remember how bad I really am. Don't even ask about my poetry. Here are some efforts I'm not too ashamed of and actually represents most of my extant visual arts corpus.

Mandalas are geometric images created as a meditation exercise. Here's a bunch of them I did a few years ago.
Bodhidharma - Watercolor, 8" x 10". The bhodisattva who brought Zen to China from India. He is always depicted with large bulging eyes to show his determination.
Portrait of a man, 1983 - Pen and ink, 4" x 5". This may be a self portrait. I can't tell without my glasses. 

Seattle, 1972 - Oil on canvas, 30" x 20". My only real attempt at oil painting. I lived in Seattle for a few months with a couple of roommates, one of whom was a talented artist. He did abstract surrealist images on an easel that was set up in our living room and encouraged me to try it. This is the result. Believe it or not, the swirls were inspired by the intricate inked vinework on the Hellier Stradivari violin (1679). I used this design on the sides of several of my Appalachian dulcimers and found it pleasant to doodle in the florid style as seen below. (click on images for larger views)

Doodles, 1983 - Pen and ink,  8" x 10". I was working in the windowless basement of a library and spent much of my time on the phone. I began doodling on a piece of art paper and just kept adding to it over a period of a couple of weeks. This is the result. 

Soundholes, ca.1985 - Pencil sketches. In the 1980's I built around 100 bowed psalteries and sold them at art fairs in the Lexington, KY, area. These are some sketches I did for soundhole designs. I used the quatrefoil design on the right a lot.

A sort of maze doodle. I like the fractal quality of branching cuneiform marks. 1983
Tromba marina scroll design 1985. A pencil sketch of an unusual double scroll head for this strange one-stringed instrument.
I did a series of doodles with abstract faces. This one expresses alienation (duh). 1983

 
Profiles -crowds 1983

Catamaran 1983