A generous tribute to my silverpoint drawing and the end of my solo exhibition at MA Arte Contemporaneo, Palma
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Mastery of Line /
Suzanne Valadon, from very inauspicious beginnings, worked her way determinedly and passionately to great success and recognition as a woman artist of enormous courage and great skill especially in drawing. She achieved all this at a time when women of humble birth were simply never accepted in the artistic worlds of late 19th-early 20th century Paris. She came from hard-working, stoic Limousin stock, as she depicted in this portrait of her mother.
Read MoreThe Unconscious Balancing Act /
Claude Monet and many other artists, consciously or unconsciously, seek balance in their lives by creating art when the world around them seems in turmoil . I too realise that drawing has helped me at a time of roiled events in the United States.
Read MoreThoughts about art: Joan Bennassar /
Remarks by a Mallorcan artist, Joan Bennassar, about art, its role in society and the need for artists to be ethical and respectful of themselves got me thinking about our role as artists, particularly in a pandemic-afflicted world.
Read MoreConfinement and the Artist /
Corvid-19 confinement is a time of great ironies, it seems. Enormous stress and tragedy contrast with astonishing abundance of ways to occupy one’s hours of isolation. For me as an artist, I am beginning to feel that some of the contrasts are a little overwhelming.
Read MoreDrawing in the Studiolo /
An interesting and thought-provoking drawing exhibition was on view until the end of September at the Centro de Arte e Cultura da Fundação Eugénio de Almeida, Évora, Portugal. Many of the texts accompanying the show were worth pondering.
Read More"The longest threads" /
How do I, as an artist, select “the longest threads” to represent the whole, complex tapestry of a piece of the natural world? Perhaps the only way I have found is to draw from life and learn, learn and learn some more of how nature is organised,
Read MoreRevisiting Earlier Drawings /
The tang of mint, the fragility of a lily - botanical drawing teaches about so many aspects of plants. Yet it is interesting to measure that as I have evolved as an artist, those earlier drawings have led me on to learning so much more about trees, rocks, environments, places. Seeing two exhibitions of my botanical metalpoint drawings up now in Berkeley and Oakland at the same time is both a celebration and a realisation of how the world can teach us artists so much more, all the time.
Read MoreA Passion for Drawing /
Three exhibitions in New York, each by a superb artist in a different century, but all united by a lifelong passion to draw, draw, draw, anything and everything. For an artist, these current exhibitions are a wonderful reaffirmation of the central role drawing potentially plays in the development and creativity of an artist. Gainsborough, Delacroix, Wayne Thiebaud - three very dissimilar artists, yet they are all on the same page in a drawing book.
Read MoreThe Artist Residency that Wasn't /
When an artist residence proves different from what is expected, it pays to try and be flexible and resilient, and, of course, keep on making art!
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