I spent the morning at a small gallery tucked behind the courthouse—white walls, single window streaming pale winter light across the concrete floor. Someone had installed five charcoal drawings of hands in different states of tension: clenched, open, hovering. The lines were feathered, smudged in places, sharp in others. I stood in front of the third piece for maybe ten minutes, watching how the artist had let the charcoal dust settle into the grain of the paper, building shadow not through pressure but through patience.

There was a couple near the back wall, murmuring about whether the work was "too simple." I almost said something—almost explained how restraint is its own form of complexity—but I caught myself. Let them sit with it. Sometimes the best critique is silence and another look.

I tried sketching my own hand later, back at the kitchen table. I wanted to capture that same quality of weight without density, but I pressed too hard at first, carved grooves into the page. It took three tries to remember that charcoal wants to float, not dig. The fourth attempt came closer—still not right, but closer. I learned again what I already knew: control and release have to happen in the same gesture.

A neighbor knocked around noon to ask if I'd heard the heron that morning. I hadn't. She said it landed on the fence post near the catalpa tree, stood there for a full minute, then lifted off without a sound. I wished I'd been outside. She said it looked like it was deciding something.

Later I went back to the gallery. The light had shifted. The third drawing—the one I'd studied—looked heavier now, the shadows deeper. I realized the artist had anticipated that change, had built the piece to transform across the day. Structure isn't what you impose; it's what you notice and work with. That's what stayed with me: how a drawing can be a conversation with time, not just space.

I'm still thinking about the heron. About standing still long enough to make a choice.

#art #drawing #light #observation #process