WHITE TRASH

I began sketching in notebooks about 10 years ago. Almost everyday I note down whatever comes through my mind in my current sketchbook: I jot down ideas, projects, unpublishable thoughts, politically correct or not, drawings, paintings, newspaper clips, stickers. It’s a memory place, a work in progress.
I use my sketchbooks to experiment and try out solutions to visual problems, whether or not I intend to turn them into actual paintings or illustrations. I flip through my sketchs everyday, I mix some of the concepts or ideas I find there, change colors or messages. They are a data bank of concepts and ideas. Sometimes my teenage twin daughters, Clemence and Prudence, draw into them as well.
I do not edit my thoughts. I do not censor myself. Often I write and draw over printed pages, treating them as I would a blank background.
Sure : News, sex, politics, philosophy. My sketchbooks are my shrink. All the material is somewhat psychoanalytic.
I have about 30 or more sketchbooks of various sizes, some quite large. I draw over everything, from accounting books to books written in Braille for the blind. I draw on newsprint, bible paper, tracing paper, thick velum, whatever appeals to me at that moment. My sketchbooks are private -- not for sale, of course. Some are 10 years old, others I did last week.
Steven Heller Art Director.