Lost and found edges

Yesterday I spent time again at the Telfair Academy in Savannah, looking at Dennis Martin's amazing metalpoint drawings, in preparation for a silverpoint workshop I am giving there today.

One of the aspects that has fascinates me about Martin's approach to drawing is his superb use of lost and found edges. By this, I mean his method of making a transition from a contour line to shadows and ill-defined edges of an object. The defining line gets lost, then reappears again, and the overall effect allows for a very satisfying, yet often mysterious integration of subject matter into a background, for instance. He uses a mixture of goldpoint, platinumpoint and graphite, all media that do not change colour (unlike silver which tarnishes eventually in the marks on paper), and thus they can be used as three different values that can seamlessly move from very light to much darker, even extreme darks of graphite.

Dennis J. Martin - Deanna XXVI (1995), 24k gold and platinum on paper, Metalpoint

Lost and found edges can add greatly to the interest of a piece of art, not only in drawing. Many wonderful artworks are strengthened in this manner. Rembrandt, for instance, frequently used this method to anchor and enhance the atmosphere in a drawing, often in pen and ink and ink washes. These are just a few examples of his superb sense of darks and lights and their use and placement in the drawing.

Self-Portrait Etching at a Window , Rembrandt, (Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago)

Saskia Sleeping, Rembrandt

From a self-portrait to a small quick drawing of his wife, Saskia, sleeping, one of his wonderful lion drawings to studies of Women and Children, they all show his ability to merge the subject with the background in darks that anchor, meld and ground the subject.

Lion resting, turned to the Left, Rembrandt, c. 1650-52 .Louvre, Paris

A child being taught to walk; two girls, seen from behind, supporting the child on either side, a figure seated on the ground at left encouraging the child, a woman standing behind with a pail. c.1656, Pen and brown ink on brownish-cream paper., Rembrandt (Image courtesy of the British Museum)

Rembrandt - Saskia (”Woman Leaning on a Window Sill”)., between 1634 and 1635

Seurat was another artist whose consummate skill with atmospheric transitions from dark to light often involved the use of lost and found edges. His charcoals were especially famous for this. These are examples of a lady embroidering and another reading - intimate, shadowy drawings that evoke the dim light of a Parisian apartment, where edges are ill-defined and light falls fitfully (courtesy of the Fogg, Cambridge).

Embroidery, George Seurat, charcoal

Glorious Metalpoint Drawings

I had a wonderful treat today, to which I had been looking forward. After spending the morning doing life drawing, I went to the Telfair Museum (Savannah, GA) to see the current exhibition, Metalpoint Drawings by Dennis Martin.

I have known about Dennis Martin's extraordinary talent for many years, and his work was included in The Luster of Silver, the survey of contemporary silverpoint drawings that I was involved with at the Telfair in 2006. Now his widow, Denise, has donated a magnificent goldpoint drawing to the Telfair's permanent collection and this exhibition is from her collection of her late husband's work. (He died in 2001 at a very young age.)

The drawings ranged from the huge donated piece, "Girl Laying", 42 x 60 inches in size, to the tiny and intimate, studies of portions of the human anatomy that become abstracts, despite their realism. Most combine gold and palladium (and often deep, intense graphite for backgrounds), but some are goldpoints or, most unusually, palladiumpoint. (Since the generic term, metalpoint, describes the method of drawing/mark-making with a metal stylus, the use of the terms, silverpoint, goldpoint, copperpoint or palladiumpoint, for instance, simply describes the metal used to draw.)

Deanna XXVI. silverpoint, Dennis Martin

Metalpoint, Dennis Martin

A remarkable artist, and a memorable exhibition not to be missed!

The Frequent Juxtapositions of Beauty and Terror

The adage about beautiful art being created against a backdrop of terror and upheavals has always fascinated me. I was thinking of its ironies recently as I sat listening to utterly lovely chamber music, of the most civilised and uplifting, and realised that I was facing a huge and dramatic Julian Story 1888 painting of "The Black Prince at the Battle of Crecy" hanging on the wall of the Telfair Museum of Art Rotunda Gallery. I looked further around the walls and there was another savage battle scene, also painted in 1888 by Josef Brandt, simply entitled "A Battle".

The Battle of Crecy, Julian Russell Story, oil on canvas, 1888, (Image courtesy of the Telfair Museums, Savannah, GA)

Granted that the chronologies of all these contexts were totally unrelated. The Savannah Music Festival concert featured a wonderful Mozart 1785 Piano Quartet in G minor and Dvorak's 1878 String Sextet in A Major being played by violinist Daniel Hope, pianist Sebastian Knauer, violists Philip Dukes and Carla Maria Rodrigues and friends. The subject of Story's monumental painting was the 1346 Battle of Crecy, a pivotal battle during the Hundred Year War when the Black Prince Edward of Wales killed King John of Bohemia. The 1656 battle depicted in the other painting recorded a skirmish between Swedes and Polish troops. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition for me, during that concert, reminded me that innumerable musical masterpieces, so much visual art, so many other kinds of artistic creation, are produced at periods of huge strife and stress, whether of war, economic distress or personal illness and suffering. To me, the capacity to create beauty and uplifting art at such times is one of mankind's most admirable characteristics.

Daniel Hope has programmed a very special concert on April 1st, in Savannah's Temple Mickve Israel, which perfectly illustrates this capacity to create beauty in the face of unspeakable suffering. Called "Forbidden Music", the programme features music created in the Theresienstadt concentration camp north of Prague by young Jewish musicians before they met their death. Daniel Hope and his wonderful musician friends will be playing a String Trio composed in 1944 by Gideon Klein. Klein was born in the present-day Czech Republic, deported to Theresienstadt (where he organised concerts with his fellow prisoners) and thence to Auschwitz before meeting his death in Furstengrube concentration camp in January, 1945. Another work featured in this programme again underlines this juxtaposition of beauty and terror: Siegmund Schul's Two Chassidic Dances, Opus 15. Schul, a young German composer, was deported to Theresienstadt with his wife in 1941. Whilst there, he composed this and other compositions, testaments to his strength and resiliency. He died in Theresienstadt in 1944, victim of tuberculosis.

The list of works of art of all description that we inherit from men and women of enormous talent and courage is huge. I think it is good to remind ourselves always that whatever our personal travails, we can find inspiration and encouragement from others that - yes, despite everything, we can still be artists and produce work that can be of value to others.

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Many years ago, when we first moved to coastal Georgia, I had the delight of seeing an exhibition at Savannah's Telfair Museum of Art about Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Not being born in this country, I am always catching up on matters American, and this wonderful naturalist-artist was one such discovery.

I was reminded of his paintings and quick, skillful pencil drawings when I read of an exhibition which has just opened at the New York State Museum. Born in 1874, Louis Agassiz Fuertes was soon recognised as a very skillful artist, and his short life (he was killed in a car accident in 1927) was devoted to recording birds through North America. Cornell University, his alma mater, has a wonderful collection of his work.

Belted Kingfisher Megaceryle Alcyon by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

This leading bird artist of his day was a dedicated artist who tramped through woods and vales to record birds in the wild, as well as using specimens back in the studio for his detailed paintings. He knew how to capture the essential character of each bird. His knowledge of habitat for each bird species was also superb. His work made him one of the important pioneers, following in Audubon's footsteps, for environmental awareness. We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude as his work made people aware of the need to protect birds and their habitat.

A pair of passenger pigeons (accompanied by a second work _, (Image courtesy of Askart.com)

Look out for Louis Agassiz Fuertes' paintings and drawings - they are a huge delight.

Art Blog thoughts for the New Year

As January starts to gather speed, I have been trying to catch up on e-mail and the art programme I have ahead. Tomorrow, about thirty-six of us, art-lovers, will be joining Curator Holly McCullough to tour the exhibition, Dutch Utopia, at the Jepson Center of the Telfair Museum in Savannah. I had asked Holly, a dear friend, if she would lead this tour if I got together a group for January 6th. The response has been marvellous. Holly McCullough has been the lead Curator in preparing this exhibition for about five years, and she is thus an expert on this interesting collection of art created in Holland in the late 19th century by expatriate American artists.

Canal Scene, Holland, 1881, oil on panel, John Henry Twachtman

Next week, it will be my turn to talk about art, when I join my friend and art colleague, Marjett Schille, to discuss our art at the North Georgia College and State University's Bob Owens Gallery. Having created art on Sapelo Island, thanks to the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve staff allowing us to be there as Artists in Residence, we want to tell the college students about creating art plein air. We also want to talk about the ecological importance of such barrier islands as Sapelo, quite apart from their magical qualities.

Meanwhile, I have been trying to catch up on wisdom of fellow art professionals that they share on forums sites in Linked In. They have so many ideas and tips about how to increase traffic to art websites and art blogs. However, I have privately decided that other people must have found how to stretch their days more than the regulatory twenty-four hours! A presence on Facebook - yes, definitely, but the time to tweet on Twitter, post to YouTube, peruse StumbleUpon, discuss things on WetCanvas, scroll through Squidoo, create a store on Etsy – I don't know if 2010 will push me into all these avenues that so many other artists have already explored.

Rendering life itself

Sitting this evening in the Rotunda Gallery of the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia, I was listening to violinist Daniel Hope and his friends create the most wonderful chamber music on the second day of the Savannah Music Festival. Around me on the walls of the museum were works of art large and small from the museum collection, dating mainly from the late 19th or early 20th century.

I thought back to a quote I had read by Roger H. Boulet, that "Life's ephemeral quality has always been evoked by artists". Composers and visual artists alike strive to convey their visions of life itself, or what they perceive that life to be in time. The searing passion and serene beauty of Samuel Barber's Adagio from String Quartet seemed to be the epitomy of Boulet's quote. Dvorak's Piano Quintet in A Major was full of romantic energy and melody: it echoed in feel some of the paintings on the museum walls that harked back to earlier, perhaps less complex times.

For each artist, rendering life itself is complex, intensely personal and usually the result of passion, technical skill and tenacity. Working out what you want to say in paint, pencil, music or any other medium is one thing; finding the right vehicle through which to express that message is another thing. Sometimes an artist knows clearly, ahead of time, what the work of art will be like. I find on occasion that I can envisage clearly the drawing or painting I want to do, down to a very detailed level, and yet, when I actually work on the piece, it inevitably acquires its own life and dictates to me how to proceed. In a way, I feel this is "rendering life itself", because life is flowing through me to the artwork and back again, to form an ongoing dialogue. The act of creating art (and I am sure, music or any other medium) is one part one's own will and input, but two parts the energy and life emanating from the piece being created. One always hears of novelists talking of their characters becoming "alive" and telling the author how to proceed in the novel. And yet, in each case, the act of creation is reflecting life's ephemeral quality as it is a moment in time: that art will never again be created in quite the same way.

The music I was lucky enough to hear performed this evening was definitely a wonderful sampling of art created to celebrate and render unique and fugitive moments in time. We are the richer for this music, just as we are richer for the other arts we inherit and enjoy in the world community.