I was watering the hills where I planted pumpkin seeds a few days back, when I noticed the faint, waning, gibbous moon setting in the west. A thought came - had I planted the pumpkins at the right time of the moon? Waxing? Waning? A quick internet search and I found I had missed the optimal time by a couple of days. My father and his father before him, would have known this, intuitively.

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And then, a catalogue of Jenny Saville’s Oxyrhynchus Exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in London arrived. The exhibition was in 2014. I procrastinated, and oddly enough, it took a pandemic to make me finally purchase it. Why I waited so long, I have no idea, because the artworks in this collection have moved me. They have opened me. I have spent hours studying the mark making, the brushstrokes, the color palette. The masterful layering of the different media brings a depth and reveals intimately the process of the artist. These works have changed my mind on what seeing can be. She named the exhibition after an Egyptian archaeological site, the ancient rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus. She said for her, it represented “culture in pieces - fragments captured in layers of time.”

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This morning as I was drawing, I realized that the paper I was drawing on became exquisitely more interesting and beautiful the more I worked the graphite into it. As though, my purpose was to disturb the upper fibers to see what lay beneath. The time I spent with the drawing became an exploration of the specific materials, but more importantly, a look at my own tenaciousness. How often have I stopped working an artwork just because the fear of destroying it became greater than the desire to explore? And what might I have discovered if I had been just a little more curious?

Dig Deep is a catch phrase we often hear. But I think it truly is a wisdom. When you really think about it, there is always something more to know. Something more to learn. A new way to see and to understand. So why not dig a little deeper. Take another chance. Stay ever so curious.

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(Note: As of this writing, four pumpkin seedlings have started pushing their way out of the ground.)