Portugal

Drawing in the Studiolo by Jeannine Cook

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

Turning the Tables: Artists using Artists for Art by Jeannine Cook

It was a strange feeling. Suddenly, I was asked to become the subject of someone else's art-making. And not just to sit for a portrait in the usual sense of the word. Portraits are usually fairly straightforward affairs, either commissions or records of friends and colleagues. Artists tend to use their fellow artists as subjects because they esteem them, share creative time together (such as Edouard Manet painting Monet working in his studio-boat) or even, sometimes, because they need an inexpensive model. But my request to be the subject was a little different, I learned.

Read More

Copying Nature by Jeannine Cook

Whilst I sit drawing in the vineyards around beautiful, historic Evora in Portugal's Alentejo region, I am constantly aware of the myriad birds flitting from one perch to another, down the ground, up into the cork oaks edging the vineyard and off somewhere else.  What impresses me is their wonderful camouflage, especially during the winter season. Unless they move, they are virtually invisible. Perhaps I have been paying their aspect closer attention than usual because I have just been reading about Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, a French artist and soldier fighting the Germans during the First World War.

Read More