This work was done by Marijo Carney.

Most Hearts Are Broken

I completed this piece in 1986 while taking Reggie's second 26 Seeds:A Year To Grow class at Loyola University. It was a yearlong class and I drove to Chicago from Kalamazoo, Michigan for our every two week meetings.

We had been studying the foundational hand and were encouraged to do a finished piece in a variation of the classic style. At the time, I had been reading a fictional novel by Robertson Davies called Leaven of Malice, and had been moved by the words said by one of his characters. The quote read," Most hearts are broken on two or three occasions in a lifetime...they mend of course, and are often stronger than before...but something of the essence of life is lost at every break." I decided to use this as the text for my project.

I wanted to make these words come alive by illustrating how a heart would be transformed if it had been broken. I approached this as I would design a book, and drew pencil sketches with images on one square page slowly evolving into another.

The final art was done on a 25" x 19" piece of grey Canson Mi Tientes paper, using oil crayons and colored pencils to draw the soft round pink innocent heart that we are all born with. Then I indicated the idea of pain being introduced by drawing a small red spot on the pink heart that slowly grows until it takes over and becomes the harder edged dark red heart shape you see at the end.  I broke the illustration into two sections and interspersed the text between.

I wrote the most important words of the quote with purple gouache using a Brause nib in a foundational variation that looked delicate and intricate to me, and the secondary words in a smaller script with a colored pencil. This way you only need to read the larger letters to understand the meaning.

I did this piece so many years ago, but I still remember the thrill of having something I conceived of in my mind become tangible on the paper, and the enthusiastic support I received from my fabulous teacher...Reggie Ezell.

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