Colleen Barry NYC Artist

On Returning to Drawing…..

Added 2025-08-27 12:37:34 +0000 UTC

I’ve recently returned to drawing after a seven year sabbatical, and here are some thoughts.

Drawing is a beast you feed, but it is never satisfied. It’s like the gym, you never leave thinking, that was my best workout, i’ve mastered it. Instead, it’s always improvement without arrival. Drawing works the same way. You’ll never be finished, never truly satisfied.

For me, drawing has always been less about product and simply more about brain exercise. About ten years ago, when I was fully entrenched in it, I lived in a state of perpetual motion, every painting I made began with drawings, endless drawings. I called them “cartoons” hybrids of nature and classical statuary, self–portraits layered with multimedia. I even used brown ink and sequins to chase a sixteenth–century feel.

And the drawings kept coming, building up in stacks, unstoppable. It felt like running on a treadmill, like a hamster wheel spinning without end. Unlike painting, drawing rarely carries the promise of finality or even of value in the marketplace.Collectors want oil on canvas; drawing sharpens the mind, but it seldom fills the pocketbook.

Eventually I told myself: Enough. I must stop. I had to turn to painting, because at least painting, unlike drawing, can offer a kind of finality.

Now, as I return to drawing, I see it as a way of testing and sharpening my eye. Ingres called drawing the probity of art, and I accept that. I’ll step back onto the hamster’s wheel, but only in service of painting, which remains my most essential contribution. For me, drawing should always remain exploratory, never an end product in itself.