For years I’ve been deconstructing and then reconstructing again a fundamental premise of working in a sketchbook: I’ll take a perfectly good Moleskine watercolor sketchbook and before beginning to work in it I’ll neatly trim all of the pages from the hardcover binding, creating a folio of loose pages between the formerly hard-bound covers. And then sometimes, as was the case with this recent book, I’ll approach the pages as I would a Japanese album/accordion sketchbook, beginning somewhere in the middle and then working my way both forwards and backwards at the same time.

The accordion book side-scroll format for making drawings – for making A SINGLE DRAWING – is the closest thing to an Honest Expression I’ve come across, “Honest” meaning “True” in the sense that nobody knows what’s next, and it’s hard to understand the drawing at hand while it’s under foot, and yesterday’s drawing is constantly changing its mind.

(Ink and watercolor on pages neatly trimmed from a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, each sheet approx. 8 1/4 x 11 5/8in)