Gratitude and Art

There was a wonderful quote at the bottom of an art site that I saw recently: "The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude."  The wise man who said this was Friedrich Nietzsche, author and originator of countless bons mots.

It is true.  Think of how you feel as you come out of a wonderful art gallery or museum, where you have feasted your eyes on wonders and stretched your mind in new directions.

When you encounter a portrait or a self portrait of someone who inspires and humbles, it makes one grateful. Take Rembrandt, for example, with his unflinching self-portraits, that tell one of life's experiences, the highs and the lows.  They give one perspective for one's own life.

Self-Portrait, 1669.  Rembrandt van Rijn's last self-portrait (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London)

I am always delighted when one feels a connection to past artists, a sense that there is a marvellous heritage to inspire one's own artistic endeavours.  As a silverpoint artist, I love it that Rogier van der Weyden recorded Saint Luke drawing the Virgin in silverpoint.

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, c. 1435–40, Rogier van der Weyden (Image courtesy of  The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Think of the way Paul Cézanne can take one to expansive, simplified yet oh so powerful places, thanks to his obsessive staring as he painted his beloved landscapes around Aix-en-Provence. His watercolours of Mont Sainte-Victoire  take one to magical worlds.

Château Noir devant la montagne Sainte-Victoire 1890-1895, Paul Cézanne ,watercolour, and pencil on white paper, (Image courtesy of Albertina, Vienna) 

Nietzsche  was right about the gratitude.  He also remarked, "Art is the proper task of life".

Definitely a coherent man in his thoughts about art and artists.

Sharing One's Passion

Between spending my days in hospitals and hotels, there has been little time in the last six weeks to remember about my real passion in life, art.  Nonetheless, luck lent me a day of being able to talk about art-making, the joys and fascinations - and challenges - that come with it.

Aloe Exuberance, Palma., watercolour, Jeannine Cook artist

I felt a little like this watercolour painting that I had done in early January, which I entitled Aloe Exuberance.  The talk I was giving about art was at the end of my exhibition, Brush or Stylus: Jeannine Cook's Choices, at the spacious Albany Arts Council gallery in Albany, Georgia.  A roomful of ladies and one gentleman gathered at lunchtime: I soon learnt that most of them were watercolour artists, some art teachers, and most were also curious about metalpoint drawing.

It was really restorative to be talking about my passion for art and about how I approached art-making.  Each of us is very individualistic about this process of creation, but nonetheless, as I reminded my audience, there is a unifying element to it all.  Beyond the life experience that each of us brings to art, there are the basics of technique, in whatever medium being used. 

Being able to draw, from real life, is for me of prime importance.  It doesn't mean that the finished result will even resemble what is in front of one; that is not really the point.  Drawing this way enables one to understand how the object works in space, how it is weighted, how it is articulated, how it smells and feels...  Even if later, the resultant art is abstract, there is a veracity, a knowledge implied that help to convey what the artist is trying to say. This understanding aids in composition, in colour planning in a painting, in catching the light, in organising what one is trying to depict.  Obviously, in a finished drawing, the initial understanding and exploration aid hugely, particularly if the drawing is in silverpoint/metalpoint, where no erasure nor alteration are possible.

Being comfortable in the medium chosen, whether it be watercolour or other painting media, is crucial.  That ease only comes with practice and understanding, but a realistic choice of pigments helps too.  A limited palette is often much more harmonious and does not restrict the range of colours and tones at all.  Being beguiled by all the brightest, newest and most luscious of pigments can be problematic in art! A little restraint often pays off and makes for a less complicated painting process.

Perhaps the most important aspect to me of creating art is learning to listen to that small, interior voice in one's head.  Trust it, because it allows the creation of truly individual pieces of art, expressions of you and you alone. You are a unique person and artist. Your own ideas and visions, your own way of expressing them, in an adequately professional technical fashion, are the path to your own artistic voice, one that will make you different from every other artist.  

Warbler Weaving, Palma - silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist.

As I reminded my audience in Albany, we are all products of complex, rich lives.  Thus our art-making can be equally individualistic and special.  In a way, this silverpoint drawing, Warbler Weaving, that I drew earlier this year, is a symbol of our creative lives as artists.  We weave together so many strands of different things - large, small, fragile, strong- to create art that expresses who we are.  The results go out into the world, sending messages and inviting shared experiences, as the creative circle is completed between artist and viewer. In the same way, this exquisite little nest I found goes from being a home in which to rear nestlings to sharing the warbler's magical creation with a wider human audience.

I was so grateful to the Albany Arts Council and its gracious Executive Director, Carol Hetzler, for allowing me to share my passion for art.  It enabled me to remember that I need to return to creating art, very soon.

Unexpected Gifts to Artists

Sometimes, when it is hard to remember you are an artist because other events crowd in on you in life, there are gifts that come along to remind you about your real passion, art.

One that came to me last year, but has come around at the exact moment I need it most at present, was an invitation to exhibit in a solo show at the Albany Arts Council in Albany, Georgia.  The date has come around, for April 2013, at a point when it is most helpful in my life. 

Brush or Stylus: Jeannine Cook's Choices will open with a reception from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 4th at the Albany Arts Council.  Later, on April 30th, I will be giving an informal talk at a Brown Bag Lunch. 

Azalea indica, metalpoint 10 x 7" image, Jeannine Cook

This is the image used on the invitation, a silverpoint and copperpoint drawing I did of the wonderful, luminous big-flowered azaleas so typical of spring in the Southeast of the United States.

The exhibition will include watercolours - mostly landscapes of coastal Georgia - and silverpoint drawings of flowers, trees and other subjects that lend themselves to this high key lustrous medium.  Since the silver, gold or copper that I use in a stylus cannot be erased, the drawing is always an adventure.

Another gift I was recently given out of the blue was being selected by curator Tania Becker to be included in a six-artist exhibition at Spruill Gallery, Atlanta, Formations: Patterns  in Nature.  Four of my silverpoint drawings, two on a white ground and two on a black ground, were selected. 

Balsam Mountain Beech,

silverpoint, 15 x 11" image, Jeannine Cook

Rings of Time I,

silverpoint on black ground, 7.5 x 5.5" image, Jeannine Cook

Turmoil - Red Oak, silverpoint on black ground, 7.5 x 5.5" image, Jeannine Cook

The exhibition opened on 14th March and will run until June.  It sounds to be an interesting show and I was crestfallen not to be able to get to its opening.  Nonetheless, being in the show was an unexpected surprise.

Another gift from the blue is always when an artist gets a phone call from a collector who says that they have moved to a new home and feel that another "Jeannine Cook" drawing or painting is needed.  What a delicious compliment.

These are the sort of gifts that any artist appreciates, but in my case, as I sit with my husband in a hospital room, far from my studio world, these are vital reminders of my other self.  The gods are kind!

Art as the "Open Sesame" to Experiences

Every time I get involved in art, I learn something new. It is usually something totally unexpected, frequently something delicious.

The most recent insight I have gained through my art - a very minor item but a delight to me - is about the diminutive, secretive but oh-so-melodious warblers who spend a season in my garden. There is a lot of asparagus fern which periodically dies off, so I have been pruning back the dead tendrils and leaves in the interests of "a tidy garden". During the late autumn storms last year, an exquisite small nest blew out of the trees above the ferns. I saved it and am now trying to draw it in silverpoint (still an on-going complexity!). What should I find as the major ingredient, woven in with such skill and elegance, but the dead asparagus fern leaves. So I now learn that my small feathered friends would really appreciate it if I left them all the leaves when they die. That would make their nest-building much more straight-forward! Without art, I would have never known this.

My thanks to Sergey Yeliseev and Frank Vassen for the use of these images of one of the warblers, the  Blackcap, which I know frequent our garden and gives us wonderful songs.

As I was drawing this nest, I remembered a quote I had noted from Eric R. Kandel's book,  The Age of Insight, to which I have alluded in previous blog posts.  He wrote that through art, we can embrace all sorts of aspects of life, from beauty to  violence and ugliness.  "Art enriches our lives by exposing us to ideas, feelings and situations that we might never have experienced, or even want to experience, otherwise.  Art gives us the chance to explore and try out in our imagination a variety of different experiences and emotions."

I am not sure Kandel would have expected the type of example I have just given, but...!  Nonetheless, I was allowed another type of fascination and experience yesterday at an art history class, when the professor examined the restoration and meaning of Peter Bruegel the Elder's The Wine of St Martin's Day, recently acquired by the Prado Museum in Madrid after being shown to them in 2010.  For a start, I was unfamiliar with the medium combination of glue-sized tempera on linen, which was apparently a cheaper way of providing a large painting to a buyer, rather than using a wooden board (more widespread in  the North than the canvas used in Italy for a painting surface).

The Wine of St Martin's Day, c. 1565-1568, Peter Bruegel the Elder.  Image courtesy of the Prado Museum, Madrid

Without exposure to this painting in detail, I would not probably have ever imagined what it was like to participate in the sampling of new wine on 11th November, the  feast day of St. Martin, with such a crowd, people from all walks of life.  It took me on quite a stretch of imagination!

"Cannibalising" the World

Joan Miro famously once remarked that "That magical spark is the only thing that matters in art".  In other words, he noticed and absorbed everything imaginable around him in his life, cannibalised it and transformed it into art, especially in his sculptures.  The most amazing things became part of his art, from his children's toys to the famous paper bag which caused one of his foundries to exclaim, "You expect us to cast a paper bag?"  The answer was yes, in bronze!

Miro - sculpture, image courtesy of Jeff Epler

To me, the lesson Miro gives us all is that as artists, we have to be open to every possible resource, every possible influence, because from it, and usually from the most unlikely of instances, comes the spark that leads to creation of something new in our art.

We all know about those moments when we pass something which is part of our daily life and which, until magic suddenly happens, has been unremarkable.  Then, unexpectedly, the light falls on the object in a certain way, or there is a new relevance to it because of something else going on in our head, whatever.  Then the "cannibalising" happens, and we can incorporate a new dimension into what we are creating.

Other times, the world becomes fresh and exciting because of a visit to somewhere new, which talks to one.  That little voice inside one's head says, "Pay attention, this is important", even though, at the time, you don't really know why.

This happened to me in Matera, South Italy, when I was looking at Neolithic shards of pottery in the Archaeological Museum.  They fascinated me, and I draw a lot of them, something I normally don't think of doing.  But as I drew them, I began to realise I was linking back to early artists who had, in their turn, looked around them in their world and cannibalised images from what they saw.  This was a link of many thousands of years, a fact which made an even greater impression on me.

Once home again, I realised that these notations that I had made were potentially the basis of a series of silverpoint drawings.  I was cannibalising on the world I had encountered in Matera, in essence.  This is one of the drawings.

Basilicata # 3 - silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Thanks to those artists working aeons ago, I started doing work that is totally different from my normal drawings.  Sometimes it is definitely fun to be a "cannibal of the world".

That Empty Canvas of Piece of Paper!

Picasso once remarked to Angela Rosengart, the art dealer and collector, "There is nothing so frightening for a painter as to stand in front of an empty canvas."

When an artist has just gone through a creative, productive time, he or she is on a high.  But alas, as we all know, highs don't last for ever, and then the trouble can start.  I found this true - again! - this week, as I returned from a stimulating and fascinating time in south Italy, where I had end my stay at an art residency by being beguiled by the beauty and interest of Matera, the home of the UNESCO-protected Sassi area.  I came home full of ideas and enthusiasm to get right back to work.

Then there comes the first moment in front of the empty paper, in my case... and, indeed, Picasso has it right, albeit expressed rather dramatically.  The creative energy seems to drain out of one, the little voice at the back of one's head starts to murmur about problems, and you end up thinking - oh dear!

So the only thing to do, I have found in the past, is to settle down, turn to more mundane studio chores, scanning art that you have done, attending to paper work, looking at drawings and notes you have made.  You tell your subconscious to go on thinking and planning about the next work you want to embark on, how to go about it, what to try and say in it – and let time help banish the fright at the empty canvas or piece of paper.

I wanted to return to the feel of the area where I had been working, south of Noepoli, in the Basilicata province of Italy.  Humans have walked in those mountains and valleys for so many millennia, and it is good, in dealing with my white paper fright, to think back to the things I want to remember about that area.  Maybe these memories will ease me back into what I want to say about this amazing area of South Italy.

The Sarmento dry river bed, 2012, watercolour, Jeannine Cook artist

Distant Traces: the Sarmento I, 2012, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Mysterious Metalpoint

Silverpoint, or metalpoint when one refers to all the metals potentially used to make marks, seems to be a drawing medium which elicits instant interest in everyone to whom one talks about it.  It always surprises me how its mysterious attraction remains intact.

I was recently reminded of this attraction when I mentioned to a Spanish friend that I draw in silver, and also gold, copper, etc.  What had been interest in what I said became intense attention as I was carefully quizzed about just was this drawing medium.

Telling the story of how the monks started using lead for their lines in handwritten manuscripts  and outlines for illumination from possibly the 8th century onwards, as demonstrated by the Lindesfarne Gospels, brings home the antiquity of this medium.  The fact that, later, all the great artists whose names everyone knows - Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Lorenzo di Credi, Albrecht Durer - all used metalpoint, especially silverpoint, elicits even more interest.

Rogier van der Weyden - Head of the Virgin

Leonardo da Vinci - Studies of Horses

Raphael - Study for St. Thomas 1502-03

Graphite's appearance helping to decrease the popularity and use of drawing in metal is another surprise.  Most people have never even thought about the origins and history of the "lead pencils" they use so often. 

The virtual disappearance of metalpoint after Rembrandt's few silverpoint drawingsand Judith Leyster's botanical studies in silver are the next chapter in the story I find myself frequently telling about this medium. 

Rembrandt - His fiancee, Saskia, 1733

When Cennino Cennini's manuscript of the Il Libro dell' Arte was re-found in the early 19th century in an Italian archive, and people learned once more about silverpoint from Cennini talking of this medium and how to prepare all the materials to draw in metalpoint, there was a renewal of the medium.

Now, in the early 21st century, after spluttering interest during the 20th century, there seems to be another renaissance in metalpoint, despite its relentless aspects of narrow value range, impossibility to erase marks and slow development of the work.   With increased interest in drawing media in general, it is natural that metalpoint be one of the voices in the drawing chorus.  There is a wonderful diversity in the work being done, from classical approaches to very experimental work.  Realistic (helped by the very fine lines which characterise drawing with a metal stylus) approaches are complemented by strictly abstract work, but share the shimmering, discreetly elegant characteristics of these drawings.

Tom Mazzullo - Elliptical, 2011 (courtesy of the artist)

Lori Field - Ducky in Pinky Talky Town (courtesy of the artist)

Koo Schadler - Titmouse (courtesy of the artist)

Jeannine Cook - Havre de Grace, gold and silverpoint

Jeannine Cook - Ariadne's Thread II - Pine Bark, silverpoint

Metalpoint's allure, a medium that to me seems very much of our contemporary often sleek and understated approach to art and design, comes from its lustrous appearance and also, as I keep finding, its mystery of origins and history.  I must admit, I thoroughly enjoy telling people about this drawing medium, and I suspect that my hundred or so fellow metalpoint artists also relish their role of ambassador for this special way of drawing.

Art as Memory Stored

It is always fascinating to leaf through a drawing book or a travel journal of sketches.  Immediately the sights and sounds associated with each work come back to one's mind, the magic carpet transporting one to deep shady woods, brilliantly sunlit docksides, wide marsh vistas.

Memories came flooding back for me today as I bade farewell to a silverpoint drawing, Come into my Garden! that I did a while ago.  It was purchased during a juried exhibition, "Art in the Low Country", at the Averitt Center for the Arts in Statesboro, Georgia.

Come into my Garden! , silverpoint and white gouache highlights, Jeannine Cook artist

This is a reasonably large work, 16.5 x 15" image, with a toned ground to evoke the wonderful colours of lichen. Highlights are in white gouache, in the way that the Renaissance masters emphasised light when they used tinted grounds for their metalpoint drawings.

Remembering the sultry day I went to find branches festooned with the delicate lichen suddenly made me feel hot again as I thought back to the beginnings of this drawing.  I knew I wanted to weave together aspects of late summer in coastal Georgia, when the wonderful golden orb-weaver spiders have woven their webs into such amazing feats of resilient engineering.The lichen seems similarly tough, with all its different varieties growing on live oak branches.  Their quiet existence, like that of the spider's, goes along mostly unnoticed by humans. Somehow, silverpoint's fine lines seemed to match these late summer beauties, evolving as they do as the silver tarnishes slowly, and yet amazingly long-lived like them.

Silverpoint allows a close and detailed study of nature's complexities.  Executing such a drawing built into it memories that endure for me of a happy, fascinated late summer as I sat enthralled by the sophisticated designs of lichen and spider web.  Good memories to have!

Metalpoint's Voices

Sometimes, when I am working in silverpoint - or metalpoint, when I include gold or copper in the drawings - I find that there is a wonderful parallel to music and musical instruments in these shimmering lines.  Perhaps my imagination runs away with me - who knows!

I find that the pure, simple line produced by silver being passed over a surface prepared with ground reminds me of the ineffable beauty of a boy's soprano voice as it floats out into Gothic vaults and dies away to a whisper.

Solitaire, Wild Acres, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Perhaps  a drawing like Solitaire, Wild Acres could illustrate what I mean for the silver lines are essentially simple.  As I drew this image, the mountain air was crisp and thin, again a suitable parallel to a soprano voice.

Balsam Mountain Beech, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

When the silver lines are more sustained and yet their delicacy is evident, silverpoint reminds me of violins. The range and subtlety of this instrument is echoed in silverpoint's capabilities.  This drawing, Balsam Mountain Beech, shows some of these characteristics and was great fun to "orchestrate" as the leaves curled more and more as they dried out during the time I drew them.

A Day at Manassas Bog. silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Silverpoint allows for deeper, complex tones, such as those of a violoncello.  Sometimes the choice of ground for the paper surface will allow these darker, more sonorous voices to emerge from the silver lines, just as the cello sings in that wonderful lower register.  A Day at Manassas Bog allowed me to explore this aspect of silverpoint, for the subject matter, all dried plants, seemed to resonate with deep memories of past seasons.

Mist on the River, silverpoint, silver, Jeannine Cook artist

Even the sound of a human whisper has a parallel, I feel, in some ways of using silverpoint.  Often whispers go from soft to loud, or vice versa. They seem staccato, truncated, random, muffled at times. This  drawing, Mist on the River, made me think of whispered voices carrying on the river Edisto as I sat quietly on the bank, early one fresh spring morning.

Grevillea, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Perhaps I am being more fanciful than ever, but a drawing like Grevillea makes me think of a piano playing.  The Grevillea tree is so wonderful in its silver-white to dark green-black and its pulsating energy sets up rhythms and harmonies that seem to echo those one hears so often, with delight, from a piano being skilfully played.  The leaves are sturdy, yet light, and the branches tough and resistant - similar to aspects of the piano, an instrument of such versatility. 

Fallen Palmetto, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

My last "interpretation" of silverpoint's voices: when all the lines are working, some light, some dark, some deep, some quiet, but all in miraculous harmony, then one can perhaps think of the drawing as paralleling an orchestra playing.  Rhythms, pauses, simple passages and complex moments – a drawing can have those aspects that one finds also in an orchestra.  Fallen Palmetto, while I was drawing this complicated pattern, made me think of such an orchestral performance.

Sometimes, drawing can become even more fun to do when one imagines other aspects of the medium.  I love listening to all the voices that silver, gold and copper can produce.  It enriches the whole experience of drawing in metalpoint.

Seeing the Marvellous

Flying high above Georgia's hinterland in the dusk, I was watching all details of the land below disappear into soft evening haze. Suddenly, a marvellous swirled flash of silver and golden glints leapt from the darkness below. I gazed enthralled, for it was truly beautiful in its sinuous elegance. Then it was gone - the light and our position in the sky had changed. I later deduced that it must have been the Oconee River in its middle reaches.

The magical image stayed in my mind's eye, and I have finally tried to translate it into a silverpoint drawing – as yet unscanned. But I keep feeling that glimpse of the silvered world far below me was a wonderful, fleeting gift.

The episode made me think of a quote made by the extraordinary French poet, Charles Baudelaire. He said, "We are enveloped and drenched in the marvellous, but we do not see." He is so often correct - we live in a world of haste and stress, rushing from one thing to the next, a life style that often precludes our stopping to savour of something simple, beautiful, uplifting. Yet those moments, when we can perceive the marvellous around us, enrich and anchor our lives.