The creative body

Ever since I first drew from a human skeleton over 30 years ago, I’ve been fascinated by bones – especially the linked vertebrae of my spine, with its protective canal for the spinal cord and the openings between vertebrae where spinal nerves emerge. It’s in the relationship between bones and nerves that I visualize my body’s consciousness and the story of my body’s creativity plays out.

Emerging nerves (yellow+red), 7.25 x 9.75 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2024

When my spine first began to grow asymmetrically, a lumbar curvature developed to compensate for the thoracic one, in the body’s effort to bring itself into alignment, and to keep the eyes, shoulders, and pelvis level. After my thoracic spine was fused in surgery, the pressure of gravity bore down on the lumbar, and damage slowly unfolded over the years. How had my body coped and adapted? What openings did it manage to preserve, so my spinal cord and nerves could pass through those increasingly tight spaces? Was it simply a response to mechanical forces like gravity – or does the body have an awareness of its whole … even an aesthetic element, an impulse toward gracefulness? Could the body’s ongoing efforts toward balance truly be considered a creative process?

In my latest drawings, I’ve been exploring this mystery more deeply, zooming in to explore it in great detail – at the locus of pain, the place where my spinal cord and nerves are most constricted, and where the body’s creativity is most clearly and interestingly visible.

Cord closeup at L1-3 (large black), 13 x 7.5 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2024

Cord closeup at L2-3 (red crystalline), 11 x 11 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025

L1-4 from above, with cord + emerging nerves (charcoal study), 10.25 x 7.5 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2023

L1-4 from above, with cord + emerging nerves (brown-red), 11 x 7.5 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025

L2 from above, with spinal cord (yellow), 7.5 x 11 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2025

At the apex of my lumbar curve, a huge bone spur has formed, functioning as a kind of bony bridge that spreads the load-bearing burden over a greater area and brings it closer in to the center of gravity – a vivid exemplar of the body’s adaptive efforts.

Opening for spinal cord at L2-3 (brown + tan), 8.5 x 11 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2025

It’s a challenge to visualize these inner landscapes that I can’t ever really see – but I can sense when I’ve gotten things essentially right, when the dynamics of the drawing fall into place.

Cord closeup at L2 foramen (indigo), 11 x 7 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025

Cord closeup at L2 foramen (yellow-brown), 7 x 4.25 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025

Cord visible in lumbar canal (yellow + indigo), 11 x 7.25 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2025

I’m intrigued by the intricate plexuses where the spinal nerves connect with the sympathetic trunk of the autonomic nervous system, forming networks that wrap around and innervate the heart, the lungs, and all of the body’s internal organs. This is where the movement and sensation we’re conscious of intersect with what’s happening below the level of conscious awareness, as the body monitors itself and its relationships with space, time, gravity, and all that is other.

Spinal nerves + sympathetic chain (pale yellow), 11 x 8.5 in. on Twinrocker Yale, 2025

Spinal nerves + sympathetic chain (grey-red), 9.5 x 5.75 in. on Zerkall Ingres, 2025

Spinal nerves + sympathetic chain (grey-brown), 8.5 x 6.5 in. on Twinrocker Bone, 2025

Cord + sympathetic chain (blue-brown), 10 x 8 in. on Twinrocker Rotunda, 2025