Tuning into Drawings

A remark that was made by Andrew Lambirth in the Spectator magazine in mid-April has stayed with me. Writing about a recent exhibit at Tate Modern, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, he wrote, "...One of the chief pleasures and revelations of this show is the drawings. The five works here, including 'Study for the Liver in the Cock's Comb', are rich enough to merit a couple of hours' study, and yet most people only glance at them en route to the paintings..." (my emphasis).

These cursory glances at drawings en route to paintings in exhibitions make me sad. For many a long year, particularly in the United States, the average person has somehow retained the impression that drawings are very much a second class affair, unworthy of much attention and still less worth acquisition. Since drawing as a medium fell out of fashion during the time when abstract art reigned supreme, it is somewhat understandable. Yet drawing permits a depth of understanding, appreciation and - yes - delight in a viewer willing to pause and really look.

Drawings seldom are as commanding as a painting; their presence is more discreet, more intimate. Yet a drawing is not only a pathway to understanding the artist's paintings, it is also a porthole allowing one to see the artist's inner workings and concerns in the most direct and unadorned fashion. Drawing also allows such an enormous variety of approaches and methods that it makes painting - in oil, acrylic, watercolour, encaustic or egg tempera - seem positively staid. Take Gorky's drawings, with their extraordinary inventiveness of form and use of colour - many of them were the result of numerous repetitions and permutations based on drawings done in the fields and meadows of Virginia on his in-laws' farm. At the other extreme is the delicacy of a silverpoint drawing done by someone such as Koo Schadler, who works in classical media today.

There are - happily - more and more exhibitions of drawings, master drawings for the most part. The public which appreciates drawings is a minority, but a very appreciative and passionate one. Ideally, the task of every artist today is to convey to their supporters and collectors how important drawing is in the artistic process, whether it is a working drawing or a finished one which stands alone. If a viewer understands that a drawing is an "open sesame" to understanding that artist and his or her work, then the whole artistic experience is enriched.

That a drawing merits more than a glance - that's the goal! For each artist and then for each viewer...

More than meets the eye...

An exhibition of contemporary silverpoint drawings, The Luster of Silver, opens this weekend at the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, in Evansville, Indiana. It will be of particular interest to me not only because my work is included, but because I helped curate it from digital images, along with fellow artist, Koo Schadler, and the Museum staff.

Assessing art from digital images has become much easier in recent times. However, because silverpoint drawings, with marks made in silver that are often faint and delicate, are very difficult to reproduce satisfactorily, even digital images are possibly not doing justice to the work. Consequently, it will be most interesting to see the actual work of the twenty-seven eminent artists included in the exhibition. I also wonder if digital images, generally, have the impact and veracity to allow us to delve deeply into the artworks involved.

When one is standing in front of a painting or a drawing, there is a potential dialogue that draws one in.... you can look closely at the brush strokes of paint, how the artist has handled the pen or pencil or silver stylus. You can let the artwork talk, loudly or in a whisper, of many things , as you stand before it. I am not sure that digital images have the same power. In a gallery or, in this case, in a museum, a silverpoint is a lustrous, shimmering drawing, full of life and contrasts. It can hint at things beyond the here and now, and push us to new ways of thinking. Thus I am eager to see if the show we selected for Evansville will allow us to consider dimensions and aspects of life that are really "more than meets the eye".

Shimmering Silverpoint

The effect was really amazing. Shimmering silver all around the room, quiet, insistent, powerful. The exhibition, The Luster of Silver, opened this past weekend at the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science in Evansville,
Blue Ridge Mountain Meditation - silverpoint
Jeannine Cook

Indiana, and eight of the artists were present, from all over the country. It was a memorable event, made especially so by the wonderful, thoughtful hospitality of the Director of the Museum, John Streetman.

The first amazing thing was that the size of the drawings in silver was a shock to us, despite having seen the images digitally when Koo Schadler and I were curating the show. Silverpoint is a slow, labour-intensive medium, where you make marks in silver on a prepared surface that has a sufficiently fine tooth on it to pull particles of silver off the stylus to make the drawing. You don't erase because the marks are metal. You don't get punchy darks because silver does not make dark marks. If you want to make a passage darker, you have to wait until it oxidises, and you can then return to put in another layer of silver... but only for so many times. So when I went in first to see the exhibition, I could scarcely believe my eyes. Some of the drawings are huge, such as those by Constance McClure. That represents thousands and thousands of hours of work. Astounding and admirable.

Conversely, some equally amazing drawings were smaller in real life than they were in the reproductions in the exhibition catalogue! George Sorrels has been doing silverpoint for many, many years and does exquisite small leafy landscapes and dreamscapes, with a luster that is astoundingly beautiful. They are minute.

The other really impressive aspect of this silverpoint exhibition is that this quiet, shimmering medium of silverpoint can speak volumes, powerful volumes. The twenty-eight artists represented, all highly diverse, conveyed a passion, an intensity that were memorable. A breathtakingly spare and elegant big study of lilies by Marjorie Williams-Smith seem to suck the air out of one's lungs, somehow, as you look at it. The lilies are so simple, so powerful. A disarmingly direct gaze of a young girl calls one across the room to a tiny, wondrous portrait of Eliza, done in exquisite detail by Koo Schadler, a silverpoint and egg tempera artist of great stature in this country. The disordered orderliness of four abstract pieces framed together with seeming slashes through them called out powerfully from another corner. Gerrit Verstraete, of Canada, is a master of the silvery luster of implied surface abrasions and imperfections that somehow become very serene and poetic.

Silverpoint is a medium with fairly narrow technical parameters - you need a prepared surface on which to draw, you need a metal stylus to make the marks, you cannot erase and you know that all the metals, bar gold and platinum, will oxidise in due course. But the artists involved in The Luster of Silver are remarkable in their ability to push the boundaries of silverpoint to make it a thoroughly 21st century medium, addressing a wide variety of concerns. Their silvery voices, pulsating with light, are well worth seeking out if you are in or near Evansville, Indiana, from now until September 13th this year.

Creighton Bones (after C. Pissarro) - silverpoint

Jeannine Cook

The Luster of Silver exhibit

Time is marching on towards the survey of contemporary metalpoint drawings that I helped curate for the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History (http://www.emuseum.org/). The exhibit opens on June 28th, 2009. There is going to be a reception on 27th June, at which I will be speaking, along with my co-curator and marvellous artist friend, Koo Schadler http://www.kooschadler.com/). There will also be a gathering of many of the twenty-seven artists included in the show, which will be great fun as many of these very talented artists do not know each other in person, only through the Web.

To my delight, today, June 15th, on ArtDaily.org (http://www.artdaily.org/), the advance announcement of this exhibition ("Evansville Museum to present a Survey of Contemporary Silverpoint Drawings") has been published, along with one of the images I submitted from different artists. I have to admit that I am pleased - mine was chosen - Creighton Bones (after C. Pissarro). It was a large silverpoint drawing that I did based on a huge cow shin bone that I had picked up on a nearby magical Georgian island, Creighton. Silverpoint is perfect for high key subjects like white flowers, bones, shells...




I had remembered a tiny drawing Pissarro had done of the backside of a cow and it seemed the perfect way to pay homage to Pissarro, one of my favourite artists for his affinity to natural beauty of all types. This drawing is now in the permanent collection of the Evansville Museum.