Drawing Nature

As I work with other silverpoint artists on finding exhibition venues for contemporary silverpoint drawings, I have had the luck and pleasure to "meet" some truly wonderful artists, even if we have not met face to face. Since, by definition, drawing in silver requires a very sure hand and an appreciation of subtleties of light, form, composition – these artists are good draughtsmen and women. It is fascinating to see the hugely diverse use of this medium, both in technique and content, especially considering that the technical parameters of silverpoint are narrower and much less flexible than, say, graphite.

One artist friend who deservedly has been garnering much success with his drawings is Timothy David Mayhew. Whilst he does the most magnificent paintings of animals and birds, as well as wonderful small plein air landscapes, it is his drawings that I find breathtaking. Elegant in the extreme, they are done with a variety of old master media and techniques that Timothy painstakingly researched and reconstructed for his personal use. Nature is his master and inspiration. Ever since I first got to know him a little, he has alluded to time spent in different - and often difficult - environments, where he hikes and observes, following animals and birds in their own habitat. The resultant artwork, often done in the field, rings true, because he knows his subject intimately.

Four studies of a black-crowned night heron, Timothy Mayhew West,  (Image courtesy of the Museum of Wildlife Art)

Timothy frequently wins both kudos and awards. Recently, for instance, at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, during the "Western Visions" exhibition, he was awarded the Robert Kuhn Award for a drawing entitled Study of a Gray Wolf wading in Water, a natural red chalk drawing. It was apparently a double delight for him as Bob Kuhn had been his friend and mentor, introducing him to drawing live animals together in studio and zoological settings.

Timothy David Mayhew, Right side study of a gray wolf wading in water, natural red chalk and natural white chalk, (Image courtesy of the artist)

Drawing Nature, in all its aspects, is always fascinating but extremely challenging. It requires endurance - there are always insects, heat, wind, sun, rain and humidity, difficult terrain, or a combination of them to deal with! Living creatures don't just stay obligingly still and in view. One needs to work quickly when opportunity presents itself. Once one has got organised on these aspects of art-making, it is often nothing short of a miracle to produce a work of art of consequence. Particularly one that is in silverpoint/metalpoint, chalk or any of the demanding and unforgiving media that Timothy uses.

It is well worth checking out Timothy David Mayhew's work. His drawings sing.

Celebrating Drawing

It used to be that drawing and drawing exhibitions were almost a rarity, not too many years ago. Now, wonderfully, it seems to be the opposite situation.

I thought about these contrasts when I read that Pat Steir, a pioneer in redefining drawing in America, is having a 25-year retrospective at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY. Pat Steir: Drawing out of Line was first shown at the Rhode Island School of Design and has just opened at the Neuberger, until mid-December. I remember seeing her huge wave drawings back in the eighties. Impressive in size and even more impressive in their energy and vigour, they were done on long rolls of paper attached together. Steir made her abstract, flowing marks almost in dance movements, using her whole body, to attain a powerful fluidity that was very individual. Yet there was something about this motion of the drawings that brought one back to Hokusai's waves, as if both artists were tapping into underlying forces of nature. Steir dared to do things differently and redefine what drawing was all about, whether it was later depicting waterfalls almost by force of sheer gravity, or returning to minimal line in her most recent work.

Wind and Water', color soap ground, aquatint with soap ground , aquatint reversal, spit bite aquatint and drypoint, Pat Steir, 1996 (Image courtesy of the artist)

In another reminder of how important drawing has become to so many people today - just check out the Web for Internet-driven group drawing events such as Urban Sketches , SketchCrawl or Drawing Day 2010 - I read with amusement an article entitled "Naked All Night" in the September 2010 issue of American Artist. Like the Drawing Marathons run for a number of years by Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School, Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY, has apparently been running an annual Draw-a-Thon for the last 22 years, during which some 550 people turned up to draw for seven hours, all night. Seven drawing studios, six drummers, pizza and soda and lots of enthusiasm for artists of all stripes – and apparently about 200 people lasted through the whole night. That is an eloquent testimony to today's state of drawing, I'd say!

Defining Drawing

September is the renewal of life drawing sessions for my group after summer. It is good to be drawing again, reminding of the need to observe closely, to trust one's eye and – just go with it! What I also noticed afresh is how differently each artist draws, both physically as well as stylistically.

The body movements, the gestures, that each artist makes as he or she draws are individualistic. Some stand at an easel, making huge, sweeping motions as they make the marks on the canvas or paper, almost like a violin player with a lively bow. Others sit and barely move their arms. The resemblance to dance movements is often remarkable. No wonder artists have always felt a close kinship to dancers. Add in music and the resemblance between mark-making and dance becomes clearer.

In a way, the definition of drawing becomes more murky when you see such artists working. Are they drawing in the air or on a solid surface? Things get even more complex if you consider that today, drawing does not have to be contingent on pencil and paper, or any other traditional mark-making combination. Film/video, digital routes, even three-dimensional means to break up space, within a defined area - all are used to lay out an image. Lines can be made with so many means - from tape, to beads, to tools, to thread, to stylii, even cell phones.

This drawing, for instance, was done with silverpoint, graphite, watercolour and silk thread. I called it "Symphony in Blue".

Symphony in Blue, silverpoint, graphite, watercolour and silk thread, Jeannine Cook artist

The traditional definition of drawing, since the early 14th century, is pretty straightforward: "a graphic representation, by lines, of an object or idea, as with a pencil; a delineation of form without reference to colour - a sketch, plan or design, especially made with pen, pencil or crayon" is one dictionary definition, very much echoing others. But now, as I have said, all bets are off.

One exhibition which should be very interesting to see in this regard is coming up at MOMA, New York, from November 21st onwards. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century is apparently a wide-ranging examination of different approaches to drawing done by many artists from different lands. It should be very thought-provoking for anyone who loves drawing.

Botanical Art

Botanical art is enjoying a great resurgence in popularity and appreciation. The British, Australians and some Europeans had continued always to favour this form of art, partly, perhaps, because of the strong horticultural and plant collection/husbandry tradition. Kew Gardens and other important botanical gardens round the world had kept alive the tradition of fine art married to botany. However, with the founding of the American Society of Botanical Artists in 1995, this art form took off. Another decisive factor in this renaissance has been the enthusiastic and hugely influential support of Dr.Shirley Sherwood.  Not only has she collected botanical art all over the world and helped artists most generously, but she has now enabled Kew Gardens to have the world's first gallery devoted to botanical art, the Shirley Sherwood Gallery.  (I am proud to say that she owns one of my silverpoint drawings.)

Azaleas in March, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist, Private collection

With increasing interest in botanical art, the ASBA has been organising important exhibitions around the United States. The Society, to which I have belonged for many years, has become more and more imaginative in exhibit themes and attuned to today's environmental concerns. A show which has just opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, demonstrates this: "Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World" shows art done by forty-one artists from the five continents. The exhibit has already travelled to the Missouri Botanic Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden.

Using the simplest of media - graphite pencils, pen and ink, coloured pencils and paint - the artists not only captured the essence of the plant but they document its structure, habit of growth, colouration and general characteristics in exquisite, accurate detail. Again, as with so many works of art done from real life, as opposed to photographs, each artist creates an individualistic interpretation of the subject matter, combining artistic skill with the energy and passion inspired by that plant. In the case of this particular exhibition, there was an additional energy. The Society posted the call for this exhibition about three years previously, so that artists all around the world could seek out endangered plants and help draw attention to their plight by the art created. What more enlightened role could art play!

Art that alludes to the Sacred

Ephraim Rubenstein, a wonderful artist and fellow silverpoint artist, has just sent me the announcement for his forthcoming solo exhibition at the George Billis Gallery on West 26th Street in New York. Entitled Temples and Cathedrals, it is a show of large-scale mixed drawing media depictions of European Gothic cathedrals and massive Greek temple ruins. It will certainly be a dramatic and impressive array of drawings.

What I found interesting were Ephraim's concepts behind this body of work. In both the pagan temples and the cathedrals, he evokes the "magisterial quality of these sacred spaces". Scale, architecture, play of light are all devices used in sacred structures to impress and convey a sense of the presence of the divine. There can be few of us who have not been silenced in awe at the sight of the mighty harmony of soaring Gothic arches or the dazzling glory of huge rose windows enclosed by lacy stone. Similarly, Greek temples, no matter how shattered by time and man's depredations, evoke the centrality and the power of the gods in man's daily life by the extraordinary elegance and drama of columns, friezes, pediments.

Selinunte I (mixed media, 38×50), Ephraim Rubenstein  (Image courtesy of Artists Network)

Cathedral VII (mixed media, 38×50), Ephraim Rubenstein, (Image courtesy of Artists Network)

By playing these very different types of structures off each other in his dramatic monochrome renderings of temples and cathedrals, Ephraim reminds us of man's perpetual quest for the sacred. As he points in his press release about the exhibition, the metamorphosis of man's religious beliefs, from paganism to Christianity, is echoed even in the stones of the different sacred structures. Many of the cathedrals were built with stones taken from earlier temples. Another form of Sic transit.

Knowing how beautiful Ephraim Rubenstein's art is, I am certain that this will be an exhibition well worth visiting if you are in Manhattan.

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.

Self-Portrait, 1806, John Constable, (Image courtesy of the Tate, London)

Ingres was famed for his use of hard graphite pencils when drawing his wonderful detailed portraits of people.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867). Study for "Raphael and the Fornarina" (detail), ca. 1814. Graphite on white wove paper, 10 x 7 3/4 in. (25.4 x 19.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975

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.

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Hortense Fiquet (Madame Cézanne) Sewing, ,c. 1880, Graphite
Samuel Courtauld Trust: Princes Gate Bequest, 1978

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.

The Elegance of Imperfection

Back in May when I was in Spain, I read with interest a long article in El Pais by Antonio Muñoz Molina on the artist Vija Celmins' exhibition then showing at New York's McKee Gallery. The descriptions told of how Celmins works, in her studio, in quiet solitude, communing with objects that she has brought into the studio from walks on the beach or Western deserts, from sidewalk or garage sales in New York or where ever. Her close inspection of the objects then is translated into minutely detailed, intimate paintings and drawings of surfaces, interiors, textures, patterns. Their abstraction and depth, both in tactile effect and message, seem to reach far beyond the mere frames. But always, these images apparently allow for imperfection, as it is first in nature and real life, but more so as she creates her art. The overall effect is powerful and compelling.

Vija Celmins , Web # 1,  Charcoal on paper, Image courtesy of Tate / National Galleries of Scotland

Sky, 1975, Vija Celmins, Lithograph on paper, (Image courtesy of the Tate, London)

Her work is very well considered, with awards and exhibitions in major institutions in this country. What interested me was the way she apparently deals with blacks - in paint but especially with graphite. When drawing with graphite, with all its permutations of hardness in the grades of Hs and soft Bs, a lot of skill is need to go on getting a more and more intense black. Unless you are careful, as with pastels, the paper surface gets to such a point of "saturation" that no more graphite will adhere.

What is always fun, when looking at other people's art or reading about it, is to have a sudden idea about something interesting and new to try in one's own art. Thinking about Celmins' work brought back to mind a wonderful goldpoint/platinumpoint drawing I saw in the Telfair Museum of Art metalpoint exhibition, The Luster of Silver, in which I was involved in 2006. Dennis Martin, now sadly deceased, had done the most sensitive and beautiful portrait of his wife. He then surrounded this delicate, almost ethereal three-quarters-size portrait with deep, dark, lustrous graphite. The contrast with the goldpoint drawing was dramatic and most effective.

All these thoughts about artists' skills with graphite are tempting me. Now if the temperatures outside would just diminish a little, I could go off and start doing some drawing plein air!

Those who love drawings

Back on 3st May, I wrote about how I felt sad for people who simply by-passed a drawing on a wall in favour of a painting and thus missed the intimate and fascinating dialogue that is possible with such works.

Very soon afterwards, I read Souren Melikian's article, "An Inspiring Case of Schizophrenia" in the June issue of Art + Auction. I should first say that over the years of reading this magazine, I have become a huge admirer of Mr. Melikian and his deep, encyclopedic knowledge of so many branches of art and antiques, from his main love, 16th century Persian literature and Iranian art, to old master paintings and drawings. This particular article, sub-titled "Paintings and drawings belong to different worlds. So do the collectors who seek them out", dealt essentially with the same attitudes towards drawings as I had been writing about earlier. Souren Melikian was writing about the March Salon du Dessin, in Paris, where an atmosphere of rapt, close attention is the norm on the gallery stands, totally different from the "bustle and boom" of other art fairs. He went on to describe some of the interesting and beautiful drawings to be seen, some of which had been discovered to be studies for later paintings after considerable connoisseurship and sleuthing.

"Great works on paper do not lend themselves to hype, nor can they be summed up in the sound bites that are so dear to the media and auction houses alike." Not only that, Melikian continued, they do not command the same prices, especially if the drawings cannot be linked to a painting. As most artists know, drawings are private works, often done to express thoughts and feelings without regard to the public arena. Often too, mediocre painters can produce dazzlingly wonderful drawings, even though the market place has difficulty in accepting such works. It takes someone who loves drawings for themselves and has developed a deep knowledge of them to appreciate such buying opportunities.

An interesting point made about drawings historically by Melikian is that they often herald, by many decades or even centuries, new artistic trends in painting. One example he cites is of 16th century drawings by the Genoan artist, Luca Cambiaso, who reduced human figures to simple geometrical figures in a way that could - or should - have led to a Cubist movement in Italy in the 1500s.

The Visitation, c. 1580,
pen & brown ink brown wash on paper, Luca Cambiaso (Image courtesy of the Art Gallery of South Australia)

Other artists he referred to include Victor Hugo, who was a pioneer in abstract art in the 1850 and 1860s with his amazingly atmospheric black ink drawings, many done while he sought political asylum from Napoleon's Second Empire in Jersey and later Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Another artist who could already be termed an Abstract Expressionist in his drawings of 1855 was the Spanish artist, Eugenio Lucas Velazquez, who signed himself Eugenio Lucas. A minor painter, his arresting drawings in black ink or pencil could easily be read as abstract works, a century ahead of his peers.

Eugenio Lucas, Madrid 1817–1870 Madrid,Priest Declaiming, ca. 1850, Black chalk and brown wash (Image courtesy of the Morgan Library, New York)

As Souren Melikian underlined, it takes faith in one's own eye and a knowledge of drawings, old or contemporary, to allow one to enter this quiet and rewarding world that runs parallel to that of paintings. When one does, the delights, surprises and rewards do not fail.

Tuning into Drawings

A remark that was made by Andrew Lambirth in the Spectator magazine in mid-April has stayed with me. Writing about a recent exhibit at Tate Modern, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, he wrote, "One of the chief pleasures and revelations of this show is the drawings. The five works here, including 'Study for the Liver in the Cock's Comb', are rich enough to merit a couple of hours' study, and yet most people only glance at them en route to the paintings." (my emphasis).

The Plough and the Song, 1947, Arshile Gorky. (Image courtesy of Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College.)

These cursory glances at drawings en route to paintings in exhibitions make me sad. For many a long year, particularly in the United States, the average person has somehow retained the impression that drawings are very much a second class affair, unworthy of much attention and still less worth acquisition. Since drawing as a medium fell out of fashion during the time when abstract art reigned supreme, it is somewhat understandable. Yet drawing permits a depth of understanding, appreciation and - yes - delight in a viewer willing to pause and really look.

Drawings seldom are as commanding as a painting; their presence is more discreet, more intimate. Yet a drawing is not only a pathway to understanding the artist's paintings, it is also a porthole allowing one to see the artist's inner workings and concerns in the most direct and unadorned fashion. Drawing also allows such an enormous variety of approaches and methods that it makes painting - in oil, acrylic, watercolour, encaustic or egg tempera - seem positively staid. Take Gorky's drawings, with their extraordinary inventiveness of form and use of colour - many of them were the result of numerous repetitions and permutations based on drawings done in the fields and meadows of Virginia on his in-laws' farm. At the other extreme is the delicacy of a silverpoint drawing done by someone such as Koo Schadler, who works in classical media today.

There are - happily - more and more exhibitions of drawings, master drawings for the most part. The public which appreciates drawings is a minority, but a very appreciative and passionate one. Ideally, the task of every artist today is to convey to their supporters and collectors how important drawing is in the artistic process, whether it is a working drawing or a finished one which stands alone. If a viewer understands that a drawing is an "open sesame" to understanding that artist and his or her work, then the whole artistic experience is enriched.

That a drawing merits more than a glance - that's the goal! For each artist and then for each viewer.

Sharing a Love of Drawing

One of my private delights in life is constantly finding links and a serendipitous "circularity" in life. I have just had a delicious example of such a coincidence.

When I was flying back from Spain this week, I used the trip as time to catch up on reading various magazines. In a number of the Spectator magazine, I noticed an advertisement for a guided tour by Curator Hugo Chapman for Spectator readers of an exhibit at the British Museum. The exhibition is entitled "Fra Angelico to Leonardo. Italian Renaissance Drawing" and features about one hundred master drawings from the British Museum collection and that of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I kept the magazine page to check out the British Museum website when I got home.

Today, I open up my e-mail for the first time, and what should I find but a delightful message from my friend and blog-follower in the United Kingdom, Marion Brown, alerting me to the same exhibition and its marvels. A wonderful coincidence. One that also makes me wish I could hop over to London to see it before the exhibition closes on 25th July.

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of the Infant Christ and a cat, c. 1478-81.  Photo: TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Even browsing the BM website makes me realise that the drawing medium I love so much, silverpoint, is key to such an exhibition. The changing attitude to drawings, the role they began to play in artists' working methods and the intimate links back to classical time in Greece and Rome are apparently demonstrated by Hugo Chapman's choice of works to display. The characteristics of paper, too, are brought out in Dr. Chapman's blog, in that the drawings, when they arrived from Florence, needed to "rest" and acclimatise to their new environment. Since paper is a living organism, it adapts and changes when it is moved. Any artist who works on paper finds this out, almost the hard way, when a finished work suddenly develops undulations, for instance, even under glazing. Given time, the work will adapt to the new conditions and revert to its normal appearance.

Thank you, Marion, for telling me about this exhibition. It is interesting to watch how many more museums are mounting master drawing exhibitions, many of which are featuring silverpoint more prominently. The power exercised by drawings is eloquent. The directness and honesty of this medium - or media, given that there are pen and inks, metalpoints, chalks and later graphites - allow today's museum visitors almost to feel as if the artist is working in front of them, trying out ideas, peering closely at the human body, altering and correcting things. The span of centuries means nothing as one looks at a drawing; its voice is singular and commanding, eloquent of the artist's vision.

If you are lucky enough to be in London, I suspect this exhibition will be well worth a visit. Failing that, the catalogue, Fra Angelico to Leonardo. Italian Renaissance Drawings", would be a lovely possession, I know. Now to order it.