My sister was a rising jazz musician struggling to make her way, and the struggle is what caught me. There was a passive fighting merit to the musicians I met at her gigs, and many carried the charisma of a fighter partway through the gauntlet.
I went looking for it elsewhere. These are drawn from photographs, mostly of players I never met and some of them well known. Studies rather than portraits: I was after the quality, not the person.
Graphite and charcoal, 2017.
I began studying music theory with an accomplished trumpeter around this time, and I still study the trumpet now. Music has never been something I was passionate about listening to. I saw it as a way of molding, of understanding, of peeling back the fabric of things. I have always looked at it more as a medium, which is what I am working through now.
Graphite, 2017 to 2019.
Charcoal, 2019 to 2020.
The sketching was short-lived. Colour arrived during it, and the motif got wider and more transparent. The Toronto players I had actually met became their own series.