A cold front blew in last night so this morning the puddles were frozen with long ice crystals. The brisk morning walk to retrieve some dead bamboo from a fence line allowed me to see the Blue Ridge Mountains crystal clear and covered in snow. Each semester I have a session in my introductory wheel class where we make brushes using bamboo handles with hair, fur, grass or feathers. Using handmade brushes with pigment forces me to slow down and let the mix of hand and brush make the mark.
"I did know that the brush itself and the act of writing with a brush
changed the content of the work immediately--suddenly I was writing an
entirely different story from the one I planned to write and one I'd
been trying to write for ten years on a computer. I finished the manuscript in 9 months writing it with a paintbrush.
This made me start to think of the sentence, 'The slowest way is the
fastest way.' "
"I did know that the brush itself and the act of writing with a brush
changed the content of the work immediately--suddenly I was writing an
entirely different story from the one I planned to write and one I'd
been trying to write for ten years on a computer. I finished the manuscript in 9 months writing it with a paintbrush.
This made me start to think of the sentence, 'The slowest way is the
fastest way.' "--from an interview with Lynda Barry discussing writing her book Cruddy with a brush
