The 280 pages of this little book are filled with notes and sketches (I've spared you the notes), done mostly in black ballpoint, inspired by the dark roads I drove at night and the books I was reading at the time - The Chants of Maldoror by the Comte de Lautréamont (sic), The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille, Double Indemnity by James M. Cain, Joseph Campbell's books on mythology and other stuff - quick scribbles to fix an image or an idea in the physical world before it got lost in my brain. Some of them engendered paintings or sculptures, but not all. The shark and the glow worm, for instance, never made it to the canvas. Where a sketch led to something more, I've added the larger work or works on the page below the enlarged sketch. Warren Criswell |