A tribute to M.C. Escher

He is one of my favorite artists. His illustrations was figures using stairways to go up on one side, and down the other a study in rebellion. Self portrait of his reflection in a mirror ball. The edge of one figure morphing into another.

We discovered Escher in high school. Or rather, my brother did and “turned me on to him”. (Yep, we talked that way).

M.C. was a rebel. He took conventional illustration and turned it on its head. What teenager could resist that? To think even within the realm of tradition there was room for something new! A twist on the accepted. The Twilight Zone in pictures. People descending a stairway While others use the same stairway on a different side to travel upwords.

But, it was my brother who was the artist. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures gathered attention from the jock crowd. It was his thing, I just took art class because it was an easy ‘A’. I enjoyed art, and may have even learned something in those classes, but I never gave it much credence.

“You can’t feed your face with dreams,” my dad would say. Meaning I would have to find work that paid money.

But, I did not care. Drawing, writing stories, art, it was just an escape. It did teach me the limits of my own perseverance. I get bored easily. I hate to be working on something after it quits being fun. A couple hours and my mind wonders.

For one assignment I drew a comic book. It was a parody of superheros. “Cassetteman” a silly send up of spiderman. Cassetteman had cassette tapes on his wrist, that would shoot out strands of tape used to swing from building to building, (as I said, an Unapologetic rip off of Spider-Man). I got so tired of drawing the same character and story that I just bulled through it, doing a half ass job.

I will try to remember that when I go to my drawing board and redo a gag for the third time.

Then the teacher posted it on the bulletin board in the school hallway. I was embarrassed. The most attention I was to receive in School was for a shoddy bit of work. I choked.

The book I have of Escher shows finished, edited and critiqued works. We may never know how many other attempts he made to get to the finale project. Somewhere there maybe notebooks of sketches and studys. I toss out failed drafts, yet, I can not bring myself to trash used scetch books.

Somewhere, there are musty old books of studies and ideas from the minds of the “Masters”. Oh, what I would give to peak into those minds. And then again, maybe a mystery is not meant to be understood.

How did he think of a hand drawing a hand drawing the first hand? Only he knows.