Today, I finished an old sketchbook drawing by finishing in Photoshop with a little color. This illustration is based on a photo taken of the writer Charles Bukowski, although I don’t know its origins. He was not an easy person, or a nice person, and as a woman particularly difficult to read sometimes. I find myself touched by some of his work because it captures feelings of human loneliness and isolation so vividly. But then, as a female reader, your enjoyment is somewhat spoiled when you realize that you stand a bit outside of his narrow definition of humanity. If you’re a lady (or a non-heterosexual white male generally) and a conscious reader, this feeling is familiar and just sort of an exhausting part of reading the “classics”, like a swamp that you have to wade through to get to the truth of what’s being said.
I colored Bukowski softly, in a way that he would have probably hated: in pastels. But that’s what I wanted for the man who wrote the poem “Bluebird”, a little softness.