Life Drawing #100 Akira Beard 2017 Ink on Paper 11"x14"
Life Drawing #69 Akira Beard 2017 Ink on paper 11" x 14"
The Life Drawing series is a chapter in a longer, revelatory examination of the Self. Created over two years through exploration of the subconscious mind, it has felt as if the creativity, imagination, joy, and curiosity originating in childhood, lost in great part by adulthood, have been rediscovered.
Excerpt #2 from The Inferno Akira Beard 2020 Ink on paper
… my whole body is one pain. I can not stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me. I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall. I shall not be able to listen any more, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.
—The Inferno, 1918
From a recent body of Akira Beard's work based on The Inferno by French novelist Henri Barbusse (1873-1935). Created during quarantine as an exploration of the human condition and a means to more deeply process both what was read and experienced.