Keeping Eyes Fresh

I must have walked the sandy lanes of our neighbourhood thousands of times in the past years. I know the area well enough to feel comfortable walking in the dark, knowing which protruding roots to avoid in the road, where the overhanging branches almost touch one's head.

Yet I am constantly amazed and delighted at how different the familiar scenes look each time I venture forth. Yes, the light and temperature change, depending on the weather and the season. Yes, the seasons bring forth different stages of vegetation and thus variations in colours of leaves, subtle changes in the marsh grasses. But there is something else that happens.

If each of us sets forth, consciously with eyes open and aware of surroundings, a walk yields wonderful rewards. An artist, especially, needs to keep eyes fresh and alert. You never know what will suddenly hit you as being special, worthy of exploration as an ingredient in art-making. No matter how well you know your surroundings, they can suddenly appear in a totally different way, given a willingness to look. Perhaps it depends too on one's frame of mind, what is happening subconsciously in terms of art...

This past week, I was rewarded with a whole new, exciting series of subjects to draw. Trees which I love and know well began to "talk" to me, not as I usually see them in terms of mighty, elegant structures with green canopies far above. My eyes were riveted to their barks, the ways this outer casing rippled and cracked, swirled and split, peeled and shredded. Every tree is different, even within the same type of tree. And one side of the tree is different, in many cases, from the other side of the same tree trunk. Totally fascinating.

Live Oak Bark

Live Oak Bark

Oak Tree Bark

These are just three examples of the bark of the wondrous Live Oak (Quercus virginiana).

Needless to say, my walks have been slowed down a great deal, as I use my fresh eyes to explore these new terrains!

Changing Vocabularies in Art

Recently, a dear friend and truly wonderful artist, Susan Schwalb, galvanised me into doing something that I had been thinking about since my mother's death: drawing in silver on a black background, versus a white ground.

I had been feeling that perhaps a series of drawings in black might help deal with my mother's absence. So when I was in Spain, I prepared some small pieces of paper and launched myself into a new version of silverpoint. It soon became a fascinating exercise, for in essence, you suddenly change your visual thinking and vocabularly completely. You need not only to reverse everything, but detail of course disappears on the black ground unless you are very careful. So you need to select subject matter very carefully. I am still very much feeling my way, but it is a reinvigorating challenge!

I decided to do a series entitled Apoyos which is "supports" in Spanish. My mother loved trees; they were her literal and metaphorical supports on many occasions.

Apoyos I - coffee tree bark - silverpoint, Jeanine Cook artist

Apoyos II - Eucalyptus tree bark - silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

So I drew the bark of different trees she cherished, from a wild coffee tree grown from a seed from our farm in Africa , to a graceful elm, to a Mediterranean pine she loved and laughed about. I had transplanted it as a seedling, in preparation for a bonsai pine. It is now nearly forty foot high!

Apoyos IV - Pine tree bark - silverpoint. Jeannine Cook artist

Each of these drawings is tiny, only 5 x 3.5 inches, but they helped me center myself and remind myself that there are so many different ways to express oneself in art.

Patterns

In my previous post about William Herschel, I mentioned that his ability to scan the night sky was helped by his knowledge and familiarity with music and more especially with sight-reading. Underpinning both skills was the honed ability to recognise patterns, and thus note any difference in those patterns, especially in the stellar nebulae.

In the same way, patterns are frequently a very important part of art-making. Nature is full of such examples, from alto-cirrus clouds to ripples on the water, from a millipede's many footprints in the sand to the distinctive feathering on a bird that flashes from tree to tree.

Tree bark offers a magical multitude of patterns, each distinctive to the tree species. The silverpoint, watercolour and sequins I used to depict The Life Within seemed appropriate for the live oak bark I picked up on a walk one day. Shaped by wind and rain, sun and shade, the tree's bark is a wonderful indication of the energy and resilience of that tree.

The Life Within, silverpoint, watercolour, sequins, Jeannine Cook artist

A walk along any beach yields countless examples of nature's patterns in shells. This silverpoint I did of an Angel Wing came from Sapelo Island. Its patterns show how nature reinforces the delicate shell to withstand the sea's relentless tossing and pounding. For an artist, it is endless fascination and a considerable challenge to draw!

Angel Wing shell, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Patterns play a huge role in many approaches to art. One type of work that I have always found powerful is Australian aboriginal art , in which their visual and Dreaming worlds are united. Patterns reach an apogee of complexity, beauty and subtlety in these paintings. . Dots, dashes, stripes - they become the ultimate collection of patterns, even though they are in truth symbols of their sacred Dreaming world. This is especially the case with the art produced from 1972 onwards in the North West Territory at Papunya, when the tribal elders began to paint on Masonite and later canvas, rather than on rock faces and sand, as they had done for the last 20,000 years.

MAWALAN MARIKA, Sydney from the Air, 1963, National Museum of Australia.

Another version of patterns in art was sent to me the other day by a fellow silverpoint

and graphite artist, Cynthia Lin, . It was the announcement of a current collective exhibition, Observant, at New York's  ISE Cultural Foundation, in which her large-scale graphite drawings of skin are featured. This is one of her works, entitled Crop3 DSnosemouth (detail), 2008, graphite on paper, 66 x 71".

Whether realistic or abstracted, patterns are the underpinnings of most art. It is fun to observe nature's patterns and even more fun to incorporate them in art.