It’s an old art school trick meant to loosen up the literal line between eye and mind and hand and the page. “Don’t look at the thing you are drawing, but trace it with your eyes.” What you’ll get is something a little bit like the thing looked at, but
off-kilter, unskilled.
Take this drawing of an owl, for example. It’s a likeness, to be sure; recognized for its owlness, not a robin or a squirrel. But it lacks realistic detail, is missing its feathers. Is primitive, primal, even. Yet, when my friend, Linda Bills, an accomplished artist very capable of rendering an owl, sent it to me, I thought mostly of the Japanese word, kokoro—meaning heart. But also mind. Heart & mind. Heartmind. This owl, drawn without looking at the page, is seen with the eyes and drawn with the heart. All those impulses shoot straight up the spinal cord, meridian, chakra highway, axis mundi…you name it. And a resonance vibrates between eye, heart, mind and hand. It probably spills back over to the owl, too. Who knows? Everything in relation and vibration. All made possible by disabling verification.
It’s a little like faith, isn’t it?
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