chezgrace: Dream Catcher

Marcus McAllister opens his sketchbook

As I write this, all my windows are open because summer has finally come to visit Paris. From the kitchen window next to mine I hear the impassioned pleas of a young neighbor I do not know trying to persuade his friend about something. He repeats his name, "Raphael," over and over. As I am trying to concentrate on describing the art that was just hung on my walls today, I am distracted by conflict next door. I am trying to get into the zone, and it seems the universe is doing its best to prevent me.

So to get away from the noise, I will leave my table and walk to the salon where Marcus McAllister just put up his work today. Framed drawings, and actual pages taken from his sketchbook which he calls "Estomac Onirique," or "Dream Belly." It is like a visual diary that is attached to him at all times. He draws constantly and uses the pages as fodder when he gets back to the studio.

He brought his notebooks to a gathering here two years ago. It was the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center. He had ten or so of his notebooks and shared the pages he'd painted right before the event, one with unconscious foresight of a burning tower.
Here now are images filled with nature: a crow, a sparrow, a rat and a frog; trees in an evening in a tropical city; and faces: a young man, a sorrowful woman. Conflict? I don't see it. What I do see is a harvest of an artist's unconscious and the fruit of the hard work of a talented, gentle man.