HEART OF DARKNESS, page 055

Title: "No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 25, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 054

Title: "Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable -- and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
November 24, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 053

Title: "I looked at him, and had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances. That was his restraint."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 18, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 052

Title: "Yes; I looked at them as you would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 18, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 051

Title: "Besides that, they had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how THAT worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant salary could be to them."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 14, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 050

Title: "Their headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me. 'Aha!' I said, just for good fellowship's sake. 'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth -- 'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I asked; 'what would you do with them?' 'Eat 'im!' he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive attitude."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 13, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 049

Title: "When the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round you like something solid."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
November 12, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 048

Title: "But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on one thing was too much for human patience."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 11, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 047

Title: "Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere and studying it -- and making notes -- in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
November 10, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 046

Title: "We came to the bank, and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible -- not Kurtz -- a much longer word. 'Hurry up.'"

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
November 10, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 045

Title: "The mind of man is capable of anything -- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 28, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 044

Title: "At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 28, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 043

Title: "We had enlisted some of these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows -- cannibals -- in their place. They were men one could work with, and I am grateful to them."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 28, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 042

Title: "...it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 28, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 041

Title: "Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-shadowed distances."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 28, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 040

Title: "'Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.'"

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 27, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 039

Title: "'Ivory,' jerked the nephew; 'lots of it -- prime sort -- lots -- most annoying, from him.'"

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 27, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 038

Title: "One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching -- and there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in my ear, as it were: 'I am as harmless as a little child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the manager -- or am I not? I was ordered to send him there. It's incredible.'...I became aware that the two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was sleepy."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 21, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 037

Title: "Instead of rivets there came an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 21, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 036

Title: "This was the foreman -- a boiler-maker by trade -- a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 18, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 035

Title: "There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some even had sat up o' nights for him. All this energy was wasted, though. 'That animal has a charmed life...'"

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
November 17, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 034

Title: "What I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To get on with the work -- to stop the hole. Rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast -- cases -- piled up -- burst -- split! You kicked a loose rivet at every second step in that station-yard on the hillside. Rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down -- and there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 14, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 033

Title: "We live, as we dream -- alone..."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 13, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 032

Title: "I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver -- over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 13, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 031

Title: "Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through that dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart -- its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
October 13, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 030

Title: "Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was sombre -- almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 9, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 029

Title: "The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks -- so I had been informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year -- waiting."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
October 3, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 028

Title: "The flame had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything -- and collapsed."

11 x 6.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on watercolor paper
September 30, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 027

Title: "They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 30, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 026

Title: "Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the Company..."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 30, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 025

Title: "He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy -- a smile -- not a smile -- I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 30, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 024

Title: "One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 29, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 023

Title: "Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 25, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 022

Title: "In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-bound agent was lying finished and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions..."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 24, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 021

Title: "It was hot there, too; big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 24, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 020

Title: "When near the buildings I met a white man, in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 23, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 019

Title: "They were dying slowly -- it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now -- nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 23, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 018

Title: "Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 21, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 017

Title: "A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 19, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 016

Title: "I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink on watercolor paper
September 19, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 015

Title: "Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech -- and nothing happened. Nothing could happen."

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 17, 2012

HEART OF DARKNESS, page 014

Title: "There it is before you -- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, 'Come and find out.'"

11 x 6.75 inches
ink and marker on watercolor paper
September 17, 2012