As I slog along in the intense detail of my drawing for the final trecena in the Tonalamatl of Codex Borgia, I have to take occasional sanity breaks (like working up my most recent posts on my late best friend from high school and my childhood memoir in process).

A couple of weeks ago, with my mind disengaged from those weighty matters, I happened to notice something discarded in the bathroom waste basket, a wad of my hair, part of my COVID coiffure probably grown in 2022 and 23, for what that’s worth archivally. A friend at the gym had kindly trimmed the shaggy back of my neck and accidentally clipped too much off.

Recognizing the dramatic ambiguity of the word “snarl,” I scanned it at a high resolution:

Feel free to see this image as homage to Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.” Look very closely and you’ll see an occasional strand of silver, not bad for coming off the head of an 83-year-old man. The subtlety and grace of this image impress the heck out of me.

The Snarl might well be a milestone in a new genre of contemporary art maybe called Spontaneous or Impromptu Art. It’s closely related to my sculptures from some decades ago (found-object assemblages), amongst which were some provocatively shaped stones:

Also, on my tramps across the New Mexico hills, I frequently found flattened coils or tangles of wires in intriguing, impromptu designs:

Like with The Snarl, my artistry is simply in recognizing their spontaneous artistic essence.

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