Artists and Copenhagen

As I listen to the complex issues and concerns that the thousands of climate change delegates are grappling with at the on-going Copenhagen Conference, I keep thinking of all the art that has been done over the past centuries that is, in essence, a record of the world as we have known it.

From John James Audubon, with his masterful opus recording America's bird life, to the myriad wonderful botanical artists working today, like Australian Margaret Saul, or wildlife artists like British David Shepherd or American Timothy David Mayhew, there is an important role for art in the discourse on our planet's health. Photography has become the vivid adjunct to this discussion. Each of us artists who dedicates many hours to recording and celebrating aspects of our natural world, on land, under water or in the air, is a witness to the complex, vital web of life that sustains us. In reality, this vast body of artwork about the natural world is an urgent sub-text to the Copenhagen debates. If mankind chooses to continue jeopardising the survival of countless species, then the records of artists will be a beautiful but very sad testimony to what is being lost,

Every time I do a silverpoint drawing of a fragile spring flower, for instance, I find myself wondering how many more springs will be graced so predictably with these flowers. I am sure that Audubon would be appalled to know the status of many of the birds he depicted. I suspect that David Shepherd finds the East African flora and fauna he celebrated so wonderfully in the 1960s, for instance, to be sadly changed and diminished. When artists of all descriptions find themselves recording endangered species and reminding their viewers of vanishing beauty and complexity, it is a situation of sounding the tocsin.

I hope that the politicians gathered in Copenhagen are art lovers.

Nature and a Sense of Time

Between preparing for my Art-Tasting open studio on December 5th and attending to family health matters, I am itching to get back to creating art. However, as I wrote in a previous blog (Daily Delights of November 26th), the natural world around me is sustaining and nurturing.

I was reminded of an article I had read in El Pais back in June, where journalist Isabel Lafont was interviewing Marina Abramovic. Whilst discussing her performance art, Ms. Abramovic talked of her upcoming MOMA retrospective that will last three months, with her performing day in, day out, all day in front of the public. The resultant mental and physical changes in her would thus be perceptible to the viewing public. She went on to remark, "We live in times that are so fleeting that we need to stop and become aware of the present moment. Artists need to do this and ensure that people stop for a moment and come to a sense of the here and now." (My translation from Spanish).

For me, nature provides that passport to the sense of here and now. When I am painting or drawing subjects from the natural world, that I hope will convey my messages to the viewing
public about the healing, centering power of nature, I find that time stands still. One's sense of time is always relative, anyway, (haven't we all wondered when, oh when, something important will finally happen, or when something horrid will just end and go away...?), but when I get involved in art, time has absolutely no meaning.

If people viewing my silverpoint drawings or watercolour pause and lose track of time for a moment or more, then I feel that perhaps I have been able to convey something of the timelessness and healing power of nature.

Back from Mallorca

I can hardly believe that time does not pass at double speed when I am in Mallorca, but seeing the date of my last post here confirms that the weeks have indeed passed in due fashion. Now that I have left behind the brilliant crisp light of the autumnal Mediterranean, clean-washed and windswept, and returned to the soft golden scintillations of coastal Georgia's marshes, I have to refocus my eyes and my mind.

Palma's diversity of music, art and dance was as beguiling as ever, and there are places about which I will write more in depth. However, there was a quote I found from Vincent van Goh, writing to his brother, Theo, which somehow seemed very apt for this visit home to Mallorca. I was in a very lovely place, Son Brull, watching the light play over the mountains in the late afternoon. Above me were wondrous old gnarled olive trees, possibly some of those planted by the Romans who lived in the Pollentia area twenty-two centuries ago. There was a soft tinkling of bells as a flock of sheep drifted into sight as they slowly but deliberately climbed the terraces higher and higher to grazing up the mountain's flanks. The grey dry stone walls and the warm golden brown of the olive tree trunks served to emphasise the subtle green of the olive leaves as they shimmered in the slight breeze. Below, the last glow of pink summer oleanders warmed the foreground and caught the evening sunlight.

In the same tones of delight and wonder, Van Gogh wrote, "Ah, my dear Theo, if you could see the olive trees at this time of year... The old-silver and silver foliage greening up against the blue. And the orangeish ploughed soil. It’s something very different from what one thinks of it in the north – it’s a thing of such delicacy – so refined. It’s like the lopped willows of our Dutch meadows or the oak bushes of our dunes, that’s to say the murmur of an olive grove has something very intimate, immensely old about it. It’s too beautiful for me to dare paint it or be able to form an idea of it. The oleander – ah – it speaks of love and it’s as beautiful as Puvis de Chavannes’ Lesbos, where there were women beside the sea. But the olive tree is something else, it is, if you want to compare it to something, like Delacroix." (Ah mon cher Theo, si tu voyais les oliviers à cette epoque ci... Le feuillage vieil argent & argent verdissant contre le bleu. Et le sol labouré orangeâtre.– C’est quelque chôse de tout autre que ce qu’on en pense dans le nord – c’est d’un fin – d’un distingué.– C’est comme les saules ébranchés de nos prairies hollandaises ou les buissons de chêne de nos dunes, c.à.d. le murmure d’un verger d’oliviers a quelque chose de très intime, d’immensement vieux. C’est trop beau pour que j’ose le peindre ou puisse le concevoir. Le laurier rose – ah – cela parle amour et c’est beau comme le Lesbos de Puvis de Chavannes où il y avait les femmes au bord de la mer. Mais l’olivier c’est autre chôse, c’est si on veut le comparer a quelque chôse, du Delacroix.) Van Gogh was writing on April 28th, 1889, while he was staying in Arles.

I could understand his inhibitions about trying to paint the olives - they are such extraordinary trees that they defy many attempts by artists to depict them. I have preferred to draw them in silverpoint, because of that oxidised silver green Theo talks of, but I never seem to have sufficient time to sit down and try to do them justice when I am in Mallorca. Manaña...!

"Art is everywhere"

American sculptress, Louise Nevelson, once said, "I always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except that it has to pass through a creative mind." (http://www.louisenevelsonfoundation.org/). I find that a wonderful optic for an artist to embrace, because it gives one carte blanche to seize upon any and everything as grist for the mill in creative terms. It means that ideally, one's antennae are up and working all the time, because you never know when you will find a new idea that leads to doing something creative.

Not only does one needs to be attentive to the world around one, but also, I personally find, there needs to be time to be quiet and not particularly active in thinking about creating art. It is at almost meditative times- when ironing, walking, lying half-asleep at night, etc. - that I find ideas comes floating into my head, or connections between things I have seen or heard are made that can lead to something creative. More and more, I understand that art-making, for me, seems to be a function of being comfortable in one's skin and head, so as to speak, when trust exists in what might float up and happen, leading to ideas and new dialogues. You never know what will surface, but you just need to know that indeed there is art potentially everywhere to be welcomed. It can be the most humble of things or the most amazing of sights. Frequently, I will pick up something on a walk and get a look of surprise from my husband. But later, the resultant art will be greeted with a nod of understanding!

(Sapelo Lichen silverpoint, white gouache highlights on tinted ground)

When you think of what Louise Nevelson picked up by way of discarded "rubbish" and then turned into amazing creations, it gives every artist licence to use any and every resource as a bridge to creation. Not only creation, in fact, but the new interpretation and/or version of whatever has been created serve potentially as a source of fresh dialogue and understanding between people around the world, transcending borders and cultures. Art is everywhere and its presence allows more art to flourish in the future.

Art and Meditation

I recently read a fascinating review in Art in America (April 2009) by Edward M. Gomez, entitled Altered States. It was a review of the just-closed exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum on "The Third Mind", which examined the influence of Asia on earlier generations of artists. Apparently, many of those artists meditated, a result of their interest in Buddhism. Their ability to pay attention to matters deemed "ordinary" and to be able to "suspend time" derived, it was thought, from their practice of meditation. Artists as diverse as Arthur Dove or John Cage were cited in the article.


Thinking about the role of meditation in my own experience made me realise that although I do indeed meditate, I find that the act of making art is in itself a form of meditation. Most artists I know find that time becomes a very variable affair, since we all lose track of time very easily when creating art. However, I also find that I become much more efficient at using the rest of my time, away from art, to do all the other daily chores when I am working on a painting or drawing. I wonder if that is a common occurrence? It is also easy to pay close attention to whatever art and subject of art I am involved with, although I don't know that I would attribute that aspect of art-making to the practice of meditation.

When I am not able to work as an artist, I find I get really dislocated, and so it is a relief to revert to mediation to make life more serene. Brain circuitry in artists must be predicated on a daily "fix" of art, apparently!


The rhythm of observation and creation, drawing and looking, is indeed addictive. Even when I find myself inside because of bad weather, as happened when I was Artist in Residence once at Wild Acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is a meditative peace and serenity from trying to create harmony and yet accuracy in a silverpoint drawing. Even with the most humble of materials!


This was the result of two days of solid rain and yet I had little realisation of how much time elapsed during the execution of the drawing.

Blue Ridge Mountain Meditation

silverpoint 11 x 15" image
collection of Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Evansville, IN

Perfumes, sound and light

I have just spent time in my other home in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. There, it is a green and beautiful spring after bountiful rains this year, and the island is celebrating with exuberant growth on mountain slopes and down stony valleys.

I had some time to paint and draw, and once again, my sense of place was expanded and extended. I know that wherever one is working outdoors as an artist, you become conscious of all your surroundings. It seemed to be especially the case this spring in Spain : the perfume of orange blossom, lemon blossom, jasmine and roses floated everywhere on the air. As the sun warmed, each morning, and the sky became brilliant, the perfumes intensified and became intoxicating. The light grew more brilliant - oh, that Mediterranean light! And as I sat quietly, totally enraptured with all this light and drunk on these exquisite perfumes, I was serenaded by blackbirds singing their wondrous melodies, or tiny serins buzzing excitedly high in the trees above.

I was soothed and inspired. As the light changed and the flowers I was depicting opened, moved and faded, I was enveloped in this world in which I was sitting. I felt a bond and a sense of kinship with all the wonderful artists who have worked in the Mediterranean region down the ages - Italian masters like Botticelli or Guercino, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Cezanne or Raoul Dufy in France, even Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, just to name one Spanish artist who celebrated so superbly the brilliant light of Spain (www.museosorolla.mcu.es if you speak Spanish or www.the.athenaeum.org/art/by_artist.php?=373). They all responded to the same light, perfumes and sounds. From the flowers painted on the walls of ancient Egyptian tombs to the frescoes on walls of opulent homes in Pompeii, artists have always gloried in the beauties of flowers growing in the Mediterranean world. I felt it was a great privilege to be immersed in this world of brilliant light, intoxicating perfume and liquid bird song, as I celebrated Mallorca's spring flowers in silverpoint and watercolour.

Metalpoint's Voices

Sometimes, when I am working in silverpoint - or metalpoint, when I include gold or copper in the drawings - I find that there is a wonderful parallel to music and musical instruments in these shimmering lines.  Perhaps my imagination runs away with me - who knows!

I find that the pure, simple line produced by silver being passed over a surface prepared with ground reminds me of the ineffable beauty of a boy's soprano voice as it floats out into Gothic vaults and dies away to a whisper.



Perhaps  a drawing like Solitaire, Wild Acres could illustrate what I mean for the silver lines are essentially simple.  As I drew this image, the mountain air was crisp and thin, again a suitable parallel to a soprano voice.

When the silver lines are more sustained and yet their delicacy is evident, silverpoint reminds me of violins.  The range and subtlety of this instrument is echoed in silverpoint's capabilities.  This drawing, Balsam Mountain Beech, shows some of these characteristics and was great fun to "orchestrate" as the leaves curled more and more as they dried out during the time I drew them.

Silverpoint allows for deeper, complex tones, such as those of a violoncello.  Sometimes the choice of ground for the paper surface will allow these darker, more sonorous voices to emerge from the silver lines, just as the cello sings in that wonderful lower register.  A Day at Manassas Bog allowed me to explore this aspect of silverpoint, for the subject matter, all dried plants, seemed to resonate with deep memories of past seasons.

Even the sound of a human whisper has a parallel, I feel, in some ways of using silverpoint.  Often whispers go from soft to loud, or vice versa.  They seem staccato, truncated, random, muffled ... at times.  This  drawing, Mist on the River, made me think of whispered voices carrying on the river Edisto as I sat quietly on the bank, early one fresh spring morning.

Perhaps I am being more fanciful than ever, but a drawing like Grevillea makes me think of a piano playing.  The Grevillea tree is so wonderful in its silver-white to dark green-black and its pulsating energy sets up rhythms and harmonies that seem to echo those one hears so often, with delight, from a piano being skilfully played.  The leaves are sturdy, yet light, and the branches tough and resistant - similar to aspects of the piano, an instrument of such versatility. 

My last "interpretation" of silverpoint's voices: when all the lines are working, some light, some dark, some deep, some quiet, but all in miraculous harmony, then one can perhaps think of the drawing as paralleling an orchestra playing.  Rhythms, pauses, simple passages and complex moments... a drawing can have those aspects that one finds also in an orchestra.  Fallen Palmetto, while I was drawing this complicated pattern, made me think of such an orchestral performance.

Sometimes, drawing can become even more fun to do when one imagines other aspects of the medium.  I love listening to all the voices that silver, gold and copper can produce.  It enriches the whole experience of drawing in metalpoint.

Different eyes, same area

Yesterday, I talked of artwork that Marjett Schille and I created as Artists in Residence on Sapelo Island, courtesy of SINERR, the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve.

Sitting virtually side by side, we created very different views of the same Green Pond area, because we are individuals, each bringing to the subject matter our own life and artistic experience and our artistic eye.

Another example of our different reactions to the same scenery is shown by two other pieces of art we created on the wonderful wild sand dunes fronting the Atlantic Ocean along Sapelo. We both focused on these sand dunes with their special ecology, so valuable to the protection of the island lying to their west. But these images show up the differences in approach.

On the left is my silverpoint of a Sand Dune Colony, while on the right is Marjett's lovely watercolour of the sand dunes themselves. Just looking at her image reminds me of the sea breezes softening the hot, hot sun beating down on us as we worked.

Each of us artists can produce a wondrous diversity of work from the same material. It really allows one to echo the French, "Vive la différence"!

Defining your identity as an artist

Defining yourself as an artist is a lifelong endeavour. Each of us aspires to have a singular voice, a hallmark style and an artistic identity unlike anyone else. Achieving one's own style as an artist is complex, on-going and both technical and psychological. First of all, I believe, it has to do with defining who you are as a person and what you want to say, overall, through your art. It also has to do with hanging on to your belief in yourself, being willing always to learn and adapt, but nonetheless, being true to your own core identity. Sometimes that can be hard, especially when tough economic times demand lots of compromises.

One tool which I find very useful to help me define my identity is drawing. Whether it is with charcoal, graphite, pen and ink, conte crayon, chalk or silverpoint, it does not matter. It is the act of drawing that helps strip things down to bare bones, to try to get at the core of what I am trying to say. In other words, to define my art and thus to define me as an artist. Drawing is a tool with two rather different uses. The first is to make a finished drawing, a work of art that stands alone. The second is to draw small, quick studies for composition, distribution of lights and darks, etc. in preparation for a painting.

Drawing, unlike painting, is a direct, spontaneous act, indicative of emotions and thoughts in fresh and unadorned fashion. Many of the great Old Master drawings will leave errors and show corrections - a new line of a cheekbone on top of one that was off in proportion, an arm which has changed position slightly since the first line was put down, a tangle of lines where the artist was thinking of how to depict something or even blobs of ink where the pen "misbehaved". Rembrandt had many a tussle with his pens and ink but very frequently, that drawing could be readily recognised as one done by Rembrandt.

Try using drawing, any drawing, as a pathway to defining more clearly who you are as an artist. It is often a surprising and enlightening exercise - and fun as well.

"Nature, however beautiful, is not art..."

In Martha R. Severens' book on Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, An Artist, a Place and a Time, (http://www.gibbesmuseum.org/) she quotes Birge Harrison saying that "Nature, however beautiful, is not art. Art is natural beauty interpreted through human temperament". This was a tenet Alice Ravenel Huger Smith kept very much in mind when she was painting her luminous watercolors of the Low Country around Charleston.

It is an observation that constantly resonates with me as I try to interpret the landscapes of coastal Georgia or places I visit in Europe. What to select first, when one is choosing a scene? How to portray the subject one has chosen? What medium is best? Why is one attracted to that scene chosen - what makes it so special that one wants to spend time and energy depicting it?

Working plein air is a wonderful exercise in humility. The light changes, the insects bite, one loses the initial spark of excitement, the wind blows... so many challenges! But if one keeps on going and tries to remember why that scene called out to be drawn or painted, somehow one struggles on through to some form of conclusion. Later, the studio is the place for consideration and evaluation of what one has tried to accomplish. Watercolor and silverpoint drawings are both unforgiving so it is hard to make many changes. Nonetheless, sometimes, the natural beauty does get interpreted in successful fashion and the landscape painting or drawing works out. That leaves me with a good feeling and makes me all the more eager to go out looking for the next installment of "beautiful nature".

Discovery of a wonderful draughtswoman, Sky Pape

Just recently, I read of an exhibition opening at New York's June Kelly Gallery entitled "Water Works: Surface Tension", with drawings by Sky Pape. I was intrigued and delighted: this Canadian artist, living in New York, is creating drawings that I find beautiful, sensitive and highly unusual.

Sky Pape is pushing out the boundaries of the definition of drawing in a way that marries physical - and I mean her whole body, not just arms and hands - with intellectual and true global awareness. She uses the traditional drawing media - save for silverpoint, apparently - but in totally new fashions. Her papers are from many sources, but all with environmental and societal considerations. Tibet, Nepal, Korea and Japan are some of the paper-making sources, and she views her work as "a collaboration with those distant paper-makers in Asia", as she folds, cuts, amalgamates and reverses the different types of paper to create her work.

Her mark-making media range from graphite to coloured pencil to ink - humble, traditional and simple media, but she uses them in very different fashion. For instance, she blows ink through tubes and funnels onto these handmade Asian papers that she has spread on the floor. Building on her belief that drawing is at the centre of any art, she is combining a physical expressiveness with a recognition that the paper is part of the creative dialogue, and it too symbolises nature in all its manifestations. The minimalist and elegant drawings that result from these unusual approaches are evocative, and satisfying - even seen in digital form. How much more worthwhile they must be to see in person, one can only imagine.

Having had the fun of studying many of her drawings on her website, I am not at all surprised that she will be spending March this year in Bellagio, Italy, on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are many many wonderful draughtsmen working today, but I am always thrilled to find an artist who is not only pushing out the boundaries of drawing media but going so in an uplifting fashion that makes me go "Ah!" with pleasure and interest.

See what you all think of Sky Pape....

Trust

Growing up on a farm in Tanzania, I learned very quickly that trust between humans and between humans and animals made the world go round. Wild animals, wary and watchful, sometimes paid one what I considered the supreme compliment of trust, allowing a human near them, to share their world at close quarters, whether they were mighty elephants or miniature dik dik antelope.

Here in coastal Georgia, the same system operates with birds and wild animals we meet. I was watching a raccoon perched comfortably and serenely on the deck railing this afternoon, watching us as we moved around inside the house, and again reflected on this vast issue of trust. In this instance, the raccoon arrives at the same season every year, during the daytime, to get food. She is feeding her four very small babies and needs help, she thinks! But trust is an ever-increasingly interesting subject. Just this last week, on Krista Tippett's "Speaking of Faith" programme on NPR, she interviewed Paul Zak, the scientist who has almost single-handedly invented the term, neuroeconomics, all based on trust. He has discovered that trust, the social glue that holds together families, communities, societies..., is dependent on oxytocin, a molecule produced in the brain. When each of us feels trusted, we produce more oxytocin, and thus we trust more too. This trustworthy behavior is of course much easier to foster in person to person (or animal, I believe!) contacts, and when corporate culture gets too distant and impersonal, we run into the financial and ethical problems we have been experiencing more and more in recent times.

As an artist, I reflected, it is not just the person to person relationships with other artists that is important. Of course, relating to artists whom one admires and respects is totally rewarding. My recent visit to the opening of The Luster of Silver silverpoint exhibition I had helped curate at the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History, Evansville, IN, was made far more special by the encounter, finally, face to face, with many wonderful artists with whom I had been corresponding by e-mail. I suspect the oxytocin levels must have been zooming for us all during that weekend!

Nonetheless, there is another level of trust that is, I believe, terribly important for each artist. Trust in oneself and one's abilities.... Innumerable times, I have embarked on a painting or drawing, particularly in silverpoint where you cannot erase anything, and suddenly felt something akin to panic: "oh, can I do this as I want? How do I accomplish it?" Experience has finally taught me to listen to a still small voice inside my head, saying, "Trust yourself. It will work out". And somehow, it does seem to. Perhaps not always splendidly, but nonetheless to an acceptable level. That sort of trust only comes with experience and self-awareness, I suspect. But it is invaluable, not only in art, but in every avenue of life. Maybe Paul Zak will find another molecule in the brain, cousin to oxytocin, that engenders trust in oneself and one's abilities!

Found objects - artists' treasures

A short article on an upcoming exhibition, "Rachel Whitehead Drawings", at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, gave an insight into artists' habits which rang bells with me. The article, "Allegra Pesenti", (the exhibit's curator), appeared in January's issue of Art+Auction. It described how Rachel Whitehead, principally known for her resin cast sculptures, also has always had a concurrent creative activity, her drawing.

That seems hardly surprising as drawing is so often the underpinning of any creative conception - the mere act of drawing out possibilities and forms helps define what one is trying to say, in no matter what media.

The much more fascinating aspect of this curated exhibition, which travels later to the Dasher Sculpture Center in Dallas and finally to the Tate Britain, is Whiteheads's collection of found objects. She, like so many of us artists, is apparently a collector of sticks, stones and oddments that range from dental casts to shoe stretchers. She considers them sketchbooks parallel and complementary to her drawings.

I learned the joys of collecting stones and shells from the time I could walk, along the dazzlingly white - and in those days, deserted - beaches of Kenya and Tanzania. With the boom of surf beating on the distant reefs, the treasures to be found on the pristine sands were amazingly beautiful, not only for the diversity of tropical shells, but also for the reminders of long history, in the blue and white shards of early Chinese pottery and porcelain. Dhows, plying the Indian Ocean through millennia of trade winds, connected China and the Far East to India, the Middle East and East Africa: broken dishes used on the vessels would be thrown overboard.

These beautiful shards have been one of my treasures, and I found a way to include them in one silverpoint and watercolour drawing I did some while ago. "Three Generations - Braided Memories" used designs from the Chinese shards.

This was but the first of my many, many collections of found objects that I keep squirreled away. In the due and right time, they will become part of the creative process, I have learned. I know that many of my artists friends are inveterate pack rats too, but it is interesting that someone known mainly for her sculpture regards her collected objects as vital parts of her drawing activities. Good for Rachel Whitehead!

New Horizons beyond Shimmering Silverpoint II

Yesterday, I started exploring the ways that artists are moving beyond silverpoint itself to expand its scope. I ended by talking about the combination of silverpoint with touches of watercolour, a mixture which requires a balancing act not only technically but also in the careful use of colour because it can easily overwhelm the silverpoint.

Coloured pencils can also be a path to touches of colour. If the drawing surface ground is acrylic, however, it is best to avoid pencils with a high wax content because each layer can soon obliterate the layer beneath. By the end of drawing these marbles with Prismacolor, I felt indeed that I had Lost my Marbles! - silverpoint/Prismacolor

Silver foil, applied judiciously, can add another dimension to a silverpoint drawing. The foil will eventually tarnish, depending on its quality. It needs to be protected with a seal if its original look needs to be retained.

(Remember, silverpoint drawings will also eventually evolve to a warm golden brown as the oxidize.) Metal dust also offers interesting effects, especially when included in the ground prepared for the silverpoint drawing.

This drawing, Te Saluto, Carolyn, was done with silverpoint, silver foil and Prismacolor.

Many other silverpoint artists are using a variety of media and supports in combination with silverpoint, from silverpoint on globes to cut-outs. Others combine different metals, in realism or abstraction, to achieve very contemporary effects. The Silverpointweb.com website lists a number of silverpoint artists who are doing very different, interesting work in the medium.

Silverpoint is showing itself to be more versatile than its traditional reputation would suggest. It is an interesting challenge to extend the vocabulary of this beautiful medium. In essence, just as in any art from, an artist can have fun mixing history and traditional techniques with today's idiom and interests. But a warning: Silverpoint's shimmer can be addictive!

August Moon - silverpoint/ patterned silk

Thinking out loud on paper

I am back to drawing in silverpoint, tackling a large study of lily seed pods which have been "talking" to me for some time since I rescued them from the winter struck garden last year.

Since silverpoint, a medium that makes marks with a silver stylus on a prepared ground, precludes any erasures and thus requires a little thought and planning, I found this quote resonated : "Drawings were always ways for artists to think out loud on paper...". This was said about an exhibition of Old Master drawings in the Scholz Family Works on Paper Gallery at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame (www.nd.edu/sniteart/collection/printdrawing/index.html), where it was also pointed out that drawings were called "studi, schizzi, pensieri" in Italian.

It is true that one does think, possibly out loud when alone, in the midst of drawing. As I started working with these majestic seed pods of a Madonna Lily, I kept thinking of the role of the Madonna Lily in all the Renaissance Annunciations paintings that I have seen over the years. The famous ones, by Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticello, Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) or Fra Filippo Lippi, are joined by many others painted by Italian Renaissance artists on canvas or fresco. The custom that the Angel who announces the amazing news to the Virgin Mary should carry a spray of Madonna or Regale Lilies seems to have pertained from the mid-1400s onwards, for about 50-75 years. Looking at a large selection of images on Wikipedia Commons (http://www.commons,wikipedia.org/wiki/category:Renaissance_paintings_of_Annunciation), it is fascinating to see how "standardised" the lilies were for all those artists.

Beyond the Renaissance memories, I keep thinking that these lily seed pods are metaphors for proud, elegant women who have born children and grown in stature and grace as they watch their progeny disperse. Their bone structures are refined and beautiful, they hold themselves erect, despite advancing years, they epitomise distilled, condensed wisdom and lore.

But as I think these thoughts, and many others, as I draw, I am left wondering if I will convey any of this when I finish this drawing... who knows? I can but hope so, but, in the meanwhile, I still have a lot of drawing, and thinking, to do!

The Eye of the Art Collector

Thanks - once again! - to ArtDaily.org's listings, I happened on an up-coming Sotheby's sale of old Master Drawings from a private collection. I spent a fascinated hour on their site, going through the E-Catalogue of the drawings, some eighty of them, the ideal occupation for a dark, rainy day.

It is always extremely interesting to view a collection of art formed by one person, particularly a person who has a trained eye and knowledge of the media involved. I quote from the news release about this collector (who apparently spent about 25 years assembling this collection). "In his very personal forward to the sale catalogue, the collector who assembled this remarkable group of drawings wrote that he embarked on collecting “with the bold aim of looking over the artist’s shoulder”. There can be no question that he succeeded in this aim. The light that these extremely varied studies shed on the artistic creative process is both intense and wide ranging: we see every moment in the artist’s thought process revealed and illuminated."

There is a remarkable energy and life evident in the drawings this collector assembled. The artists are clearly in the throes of excitement and creativity. Famous names or not, it does not matter. The hallmarks of these drawings are immediacy, directness, sureness of touch and stroke. The collector does indeed describe well what he sought - and found - when he selected these works. Different media, different subject matter, some clearly well thought-out and planned, others on the spur of the moment, catching images almost on the fly... Some as aide-mémoires, others as exploration. In short, the collection came across to me as a most interesting selection of artists' emotions, desires, endeavours, aims... running a gamut of approaches and techniques. Little interesting items too, such as remarks about an exquisite study of a seated woman by Jean-Antoine Watteau. "It was executed in a combination of media that Watteau used only occasionally, but to striking effect: the majority of the figure is built up with a network of silvery strokes of graphite (a very rare medium in Old Master Drawings), (my emphasis) while the accents in the face and hands are in a more typical red chalk, an extremely effective juxtaposition that creates a lively yet utterly elegant figure."

When you go back and try to find out about the use of graphite before the early 18th century, it is indeed hard, as a neophyte, to find allusions to many graphite drawings. Pure graphite, first mined in Borrowdale, England, in the 1500s, seems initially to have been used for under drawing in the 16th century. It was more forgiving than metalpoint, especially silverpoint, the draughtsman's favoured medium during Renaissance times in spite of silverpoint's linear qualities and permanence of mark. Graphite does not seem to have been used much for drawing until well into the 17th century. Artists tended to favour chalks, red and black, as well as charcoal for studies and finished drawings alike. (Interestingly, the Venetian artists continued to favour black chalk, whilst the perhaps more flamboyant Florentine and Roman artists preferred the harder red chalk with which they could show off their skills!) Graphite became widespread only in the 18th century, with the increasing difficulty of obtaining good-quality natural chalks and the simultaneous production of a fine range of graphite pencils after the invention of a graphite pencil in Nuremberg in 1662.

Graphite drawings then become far more widespread: John Constable, Jongkind and later John Singer Sargent, for example, all used graphite in their work, particularly when working plein air. Ingres was famed for his use of hard graphite pencils when drawing his wonderful detailed portraits of people. By the turn of the 19th century, Cezanne and so many others commonly used pencils, as have we all done since in the art world - often to great effect.

But back to the Sotheby E-Catalogue of the drawings that occasioned my little foray into the rarity of Old Master graphite drawings... (and by the way, the definition of Old Masters in Western art is work executed before 1800...), it is well worth going through this collection of images of drawings. It allows one to remember how interesting it can be when one sees an art collection formed by one person with the courage of his or her own convictions and erudition.