Dear Lawrence Drawings
“Dear Lawrence” in honor and in memory of Lawrence Carroll, my mentor, who showed me the way when I was just starting out in the late eighties. They relate to teaching, time, passing the torch of creativity, earth, water, and flora. Flowers appeared in the work of Lawrence Carroll often. Some of his paintings, which were recently exhibited, resemble growing plants or "Growing Paintings". I work on these drawings only in my upstate NY studio. This is where Lawrence moved before he passed. These are the flowers Lawrence would have seen spanning the seasons. There are sixty five drawings in all, one for each year of his giving life. The drawings are coated with wax, the medium that Lawrence worked with. The brown color on the paper is clay residue left over by my students when working on their clay pottery assignment. I collected these papers at the end of each class. which were placed on the students desk to protect it from the clay. Some of the papers were beautiful, so i started to collect them without knowing what i would eventually do with them. They were stored away in a draw for some years. They came out after Lawrence passed. It made sense to use a paper that was touched by a student, a younger creative person.