Jump in! -why do I draw

 There must be more in it then just a hobby or a technique, but I realized recently most of my friends might not even know that I draw. 

 When I was twenty one (long time ago it was) I wrote a sentence following some of my cartoon story stating that my right hand is actually more important for me than my brain. Because what I would do with a brain without any possibility to transfer this content onto paper. Some models insure their legs or other body parts, I would for sure find a sense in insuring my right hand. It't not like young artists are the ones with horrific dreams and fatal fantasies of losing their body parts, but I was quite unusual young artist. I bet van Gogh was coming pretty much from similar place. But he was crazy. 

 Amongst all of the illustrations (some of them, absolutely genius) to Alice in Wonderland, those by Arthur Rackham will always stand out of the line to me. Against the old truth I used to believe in, I think they correspond with a story much better than the ones created by the author himself. 'Alice' is probably on of the greatest challenge for illustrators, mostly recalling the names of really great ones who joined the fight. And my old dream to, one day, compete with them, one of those unbearable and impossible dreams, like the ones when you want to fly.  But what Rackham did is completely out of comparison. I believe his mind was actually there. After years looking in his eyes on his old portrait on Wikipedia, I found it there: he was the man who saw Wonderland. 

 

The movement you can see on the image is a movement of wind. Is completely natural. This is not only a way it goes, it's a flow. In this completely whole, flowing all together every detail seems to have it's own place. The world created inside makes you want to jump in. And makes you believe in higher things, higher worlds. 

This kind of experience is something which came to me recently at work, completely uninvited. It always comes uninvited, always wears heavy shoes and always causes remarkable noises in your head. It's a feeling that something pulls me somewhere else, to the world when people jump into the puddle after rain (like in a dream of Pattie, little thank you to her), and where nothing is obvious. This is the world where simplicity doesn't exist, nothing is either white or black, nobody is either happy or sad, and nothing is only what it seems, without being something completely in contrary (so The Guy I Have Been Recently Dating or At Least I Believed So could never stand it). It makes me go back to the times of Secret Garden, and hear these melodies once again. Jump somewhere in, somewhere beyond. This world calling makes me always feel like a child again, at the time when I killed my imaginary friend with a rifle my parents never had because I wanted to grow up.

 Mr Rackham will always be the biggest inspiration in this, for the escape he offered the world with this shape, this monotony and this form engaging you whole into creation. He has already beaten mr Salvador Dali, Renoir, Berthe Morrissot, Charles Avery and even my own dad. He is the one, who makes me take a pencil and think one wish 'mr Rackham, take me places'.