Drawing drives my thinking. As a drawing evolves, I clarify the narrative. The Internal Affairs of Mr. Invincible, a series of extravagant mixed-media drawings on the editorial pages of The New York Times, illustrates this daily practice. Like all newspaper opinion pages, these renderings elaborate on ordinary and extraordinary phenomena, physical preoccupations, anxieties, and observations regarding the details of everyday living.
I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. The door of our sixth-floor apartment was open to neighbors. Daily newspapers fostered grand debates around our kitchen table. Countless cups of coffee fueled the passions of adults committed to agreeing or disagreeing over local and world issues. I listened in awe. These formative years influenced my career commitment to narrative drawing.
As an optimistic traveler, I follow a path of curiosity beginning with a single drawn line. Influences derive from news stories, personal interactions, memory, history, intuition, or a previous night’s dream.
The Internal Affairs of Mr. Invincible are extravagant mixed-media drawings on the editorial pages of The New York Times. Initiated in 2010 as a continuing series, they elaborate on ordinary and extraordinary phenomena, physical preoccupations, anxieties, and observations regarding the details of everyday living.
“Like works of Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso, Ferreri’s colorful drawings abstract recognizable imagery through free-association, dense patterning, and surreal juxtapositions.”
At times my studio felt like a coal mine. Compressed charcoal chunks, soft vine charcoal, pastels, and blackboard erasures covered tables. Long sheets of drawing paper draped studio walls. Ladders enabled me to reach 8-feet-high vertical drawings. Walls showed the dusty black handprints of a masked artist at work. Clouds of charcoal dust escaped through the open windows. Freeway clamor and hard-driving music moved me forward, sliding from one drawing to another, working on four or five at a time. One drawing in-progress fed ideas for another.
Archival digital pigment prints of 25 original drawings from the series The Internal Affairs of Mr. Invincible are housed in several institutional collections. The Library of Congress has the full suite of prints in its special editions and rare book collection. Full sets are in the collections of the Minnesota History Center, the George Latimer Central Library in St. Paul, the Lillie M. Kleven Print Collection at Bemidji State University, and the Knight Library at the University of Oregon.
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