Echoing Joan Miró's Wisdom

Joan Miró

The Fundacion Pilar I Joan Miró a Mallorca is a wonderful place in which to spend a hot summer morning.  From the sunswept terraces that overlook the brilliance of the Mediterranean to the cool, diffuse light of alabaster screens in the exhibition spaces, all the senses are awakened by unexpected juxtapositions of interest and beauty. Rafael Moneo designed the exhibition spaces as a complement to Miró’s studio and Pilar and Joan Miró’s home.  Gardens and reflecting pools are glimpsed from the building through often low windows, enhancing the building’s spaciousness and its spare simplicity.

In a way, the buildings follow a concept that Miró enunciated about his paintings in black and white.  Writing in 1959, Miró said, “My wish is to achieve maximum intensity with minimum means”. Many of his paintings verge on the oriental in many ways during this period.

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Painting on a White Ground, Joan Miró, 1968 (image courtesy of Tate Britain)

His desire to use an intense but spare vocabulary in monochromatic work resonated with me, for increasingly, that is what interests me in my metalpoint drawings.  How to say a lot in a condensed or powerful fashion, using the minimum of means.  In truth,metalpoint is such a simple, humble drawing medium: just a piece of metal, making marks on a smooth surface prepared with a ground.  Its range of tones is limited, its scale often limited because of the slowness of execution, its discipline of technique demanding. Yet despite all that, like Miró’s black and white paintings, metalpoint at its best is quietly powerful.  Its lustre is alluring and unusual, its economy of form arresting.

One of the masters of silverpoint/metalpoint was of course Leonardo da Vinci. He led the way in the maximum impact-minimum means league.

A Rider on Rearing Horse Trampling a Fallen Foe (Study for Sforza Monument), Leonardo da Vinci, metalpoint on blue prepared paper, (image courtesy of Windsor Castle, Royal Library)

Another silverpoint artist working today with a very different approach is Roy Eastland, a British artist.  Nonetheless, to my eye, he is highly successful in the impact he achieves with the humble medium of silverpoint.

What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that, Roy Eastland, 2010, silverpoint on gesso

One of my minimalist recent metalpoint drawings owes its origins to the patterns I saw recently on a huge plane tree one hot July day in France.

Traces IV-V-VI, silver-goldpoint, 2013, artist Jeannine Cook

Rules of the Plein Air Game

It is always fascinating to realise how one evolves as an artist. I am constantly surprised at how things change, whilst the core impulses and responses remain consistent.

I was reminded of this yesterday as I found myself responding to the intricate beauty of ancient olive trees and mighty Mediterranean pines in a way that I would not have done a year or two ago.

Olive Tree (Olea europaea)

Mediterranean Pine (Pinus halepensis)

Yes, I love trees, and have always found them of intense interest and delight. But now, with my eyes more attuned to their texture and patterning of wood and bark because of the way I am frequently drawing in metalpoint, I “see” differently. And more than that, I find myself learning more and more adapting and moving to a very selective mode of drawing en plein air.

There is an interesting passage in a book I read some time ago, Monet by Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, published by Abradale Press in 1989. Discussing painting (and by extension drawing) en plein air, “To paint directly, to follow the rules of the plein air game, means to start with what is given from a particular position. Studio painting avoids occlusion problems (i.e. one near form hiding another behind it), but plein air means you have to choose your position and you have to deal with being blinded by overlapping features.”

Where you chose to stand or sit, what details you pay attention to: these are critical decisions for the artist to make at the onset of a work of art. The passage in Monet gives the example of a view down a straight road.

It establishes the visible world in depth at the same time that it establishes the position of the observing eye. It defines the relationship between seer and the seen within a geometrically precise structure.

Every time now that I start a metalpoint drawing, I need to decide on my position – where I am going to sit. This determines the details that visually jump out at me amid the welter of detailed information on the patterned bark of a tree, for instance.

Those selections dictate the “geometrically precise structure”, the composition that I have in mind (although that tends to evolve as I work). It also means that I have to “prune away” details that will not fit nor strengthen the drawing towards which I am almost instinctively groping.

It is indeed ideally a rather instinctive, non-conscious-thinking mode that I hope to achieve because I find that is when the best drawing happens. Not always possible, alas!

These are some of the more recent choices I made whilst sitting in front of mighty trees as to where I sit and what details are thus predominant and visible.

Walnut Freize, silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

Oak Labyrinth, gold-silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

Oak Labyrinth I, gold-silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

The rules of the plein air game become paramount.

Pouring your Life into your Art

Whether you like it nor not, your art is often the reflection of who you are and where life has taken you. That may be an unnerving idea, but it seems to be one that most artists, in all disciplines, have to come to terms with.

“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved,” wrote Ansel Adams. And for photography, you can substitute any art form, from dancing to singing to visual arts or theatre.

Images of Sacha Copland dancing on a wine barrel at La Porte Peinte residency in Noyers, France, as she choreographs a new work, The Wine Project, tells us about all her past experiences and ideas. As she herself writes about The Wine Project, "There in the glass was the soil of a place and in that soil was a soul”.

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Sacha Copeland, Artist Director, Java Dance Company, New Zealand (photograph courtesy of Emma Hellowell)

Frequently, the artist has little awareness of what is going into the art being created, if that small inner voice is in charge. It is only later that one realizes that there is a wonderful circularity in what is happening, a reason and its result, direct and obvious or much more subtle. It may be years and years later that something seen, something experienced comes floating up and into the art.

I began to realise, for instance, that my childhood exposure, on walls of my home in Tanzania, to Japanese woodcuts, wonderful prints that had been created after the 1923 earthquake in Yokohama, Japan, was the reason for my always feeling comfortable with negative spaces reaching all four sides of a piece of paper. Drawing or watercolours, it does not matter: I feel almost compelled to use the entire surface of the paper, edge to edge, to create “dis-balanced” spaces that play into the whole composition. To me, it is part of my concept of art-making; I feel very strange when I confine the work I am creating to the inner parts of the paper, leaving blank space around the image.

Marronniers III: Chestnut Bark, gold-silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Le Chant des Pierres III: la Bourgogne Profonde, gold-silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

To me, the richness of art forms resides to a great degree on all these inner layers of life experience that the artist brings to the act of creation. Sometimes you capture and understand them, sometimes you don’t. There, again, part of the fascination of art is how each of us completes the dialogue of the art work.In other words, sometimes that artist’s life experiences resonate with the viewer. Sometimes they don’t because the viewer has had a radically different life and finds it difficult to find bridges stretching across to the artist’s world.

The question that lingers at the back of my mind is: what happens as present-day ever-accelerating giant changes in technology, urbanization, life styles and cultural mores show up more and more in art forms?

Do these changes create huge divergences in art and its adherents, particularly between generations? Or do we continue to acknowledge that certain art, in whatever form, transcends generations and centuries because the richness and power of its content and message? And, ultimately, who amongst us is the arbiter of the enduring character of that art? The super-wealthy buying at art auctions, the more “humble” supporters of all forms of art, governments and/or non-profit art organisations funding the arts, or who?

I wonder if Ansel Adamsthought of those “down-stream” aspects of art-making as he created his wonderful photographs.

Marble - the Glory of Estremoz

One of the attractions of my going to OBRAS Portugal for an artist residency was the marble that is found in the Estremoz area.

I had already seen examples of this lovely, varied but subtle white marble on previous visits to the Alentejo, but it seemed to me that its character lent itself beautifully to silverpoint drawing.

Estremoz Marble, silverpoint and Prismacolor on paper, Jeannine Cook

The marble is found in a wide swath in the Alentejo, 27 km by 48 km, running NW-SE, with a depth of nearly 400 metres, but Estremoz is near the centre of the area.Historically this marble has been mined since 370 BC, as was discovered by a tombstone, and the Romans used it for many building projects. The Roman temple in Evora has bases and capitals of marble, while the Roman theatre in Merida, Spain, also has Estremoz marble.

Evora Roman Temple, photograph Jeannine Cook

It was soon being widely exported around the Mediterranean and by the Middle Ages, this marble was incorporated in major religious and secular building projects throughout Portugal. By the 15th century, Estremoz marble found its ways to Africa, Brazil and India, in all parts of the Portuguese Empire. The list of important European buildings adorned with this marble ranges from the Jeronimos Monastery in Portugal, to the Escorial Monastery in Spain, to the Louvre, Versailles and the Vatican.  Now, the marble is exported worldwide, and Portugal is one of the major producers of marble in the world.

In Estremoz itself and the surrounding areas, marble is an integral, elegant part of all aspects of building. Door and window frames, lintels, floors, stairs, pavements walls – there are touches of marble everywhere, and the cemeteries are a celebration of this stone. Of course, sculptors celebrate this marble as well and there are many artists currently working in it in the Estremoz area.  One such sculptor whose work I acquired is Pedro Fazenda. Its colours are mainly white, some with veins and then there are subtle rose shades that can be beautifully translucent, some veined, some less so.

Redondo facade with rose marble, photograph Jeannine Cook

Estremoz windows, photograph Jeannine Cook

The mines themselves are deep and vertiginous – huge blocks carved out, down and down. Some of the mines have been abandoned as water sources were struck and the quarries filled with water.

Estremoz Municipal Marble Quarry, photograph Jeannine Cook

Estremoz Marble Quarry, photograph Jeannine Cook

Abandoned Marble Quarry, Estremoz, photograph Jeannine Cook

Mined marble waiting for use, photograph Jeannine Cook

Others are still a forest of cranes and heavy equipment disappears down to tinker-toy size far below the surface. Vast mountains of tumbled blocks of waste marble rise drunkenly to the sky in olive groves, and there are piles of sawn-off pieces of marble that beg to be touched and taken. Cores of marble samples lie in abandoned factory areas, while other leased-out mines hum with activity.

There is always the question of how to use the waste marble – one vast pile outside Estremoz was apparently destined to be ground into the chips for the bed of the AVE high speed train link between Madrid and Lisbon. Alas, EU funding dried up for that project and the giant blocks remain intact today.

Needless to say, I could not resist the blocks of marble and am still exulting in its quiet beauty. These are some of the drawings I have done so far – with more silverpoints still to come…

Marble from Estremoz, silverpoint on paper, Jeannine Cook

Marble Meanderings I,gold/silverpoint on paper, Jeannine Cook

Marble Meanderings II,gold/silverpoint on paper, Jeannine Cook

Lines of Joy

On the eve of Christmas celebrations,  I was delighted to receive my copy of the hardcover and beautifully presented catalogue of the Silverpoint Exhibitionat The National Arts Club in which my work was included.  Looking through it,  savouring of all the images of the drawings, I could not help thinking of a quote I had seen from Robert Henri: "All real works of art look as though they were done in joy."

Many of the silverpoints included in the exhibition were indeed drawn in joy, it seemed. Tender, loving joy in the case of Maddie Asleep by Ephraim Rubenstein, for example.

Ephraim Rubenstein - Maddie Asleep, 1990, silverpoint on prepared paper, 21 in x 16

Joy of careful, sensitive observation and quiet in this drawing: 

Juliette Aristides - Natalia Sleeping, 2005, silverpoint on toned paper heightened with white, 9 in x 13

Joy of form and line in this highly polished self-portrait, by Lauren Amalia Redding.

Lauren Amalia Redding - Self Portrait with Ring, 2013, silverpoint and silver leaf on panel, 30 1/2 in x 24 1/2

Joy of honest scrutiny and realism in this portrait.

Mary Grace Concannon - Intimations of His Mortality, 2011, silverpoint on prepared clay-coated paper, 6 in x 9

Joy of quiet stillness and creative attention in the still life drawings of Jeffrey Lewis and Tom Mazzullo.

Jeffrey Lewis - Bowl & House, 2010, silverpoint on prepared paper, 18 in x 18 framed

Tom Mazzullo - Upwrap, 2009, silverpoint on prepared paper, 12 in x 9

Considering that a silverpoint drawing is a demanding, distinctly inflexible affair, it is remarkable how many of the drawings that were selected in the National Arts Club exhibition are fluid, assured works that speak of a clear objective, reached with practised lines that sing. Line built up on line, exploring, pushing out from the previous notation to record what the eye, the head, the heart and the hand all perceive. Many of us artists, when we talk of drawing in silver, mention this meditative aspect of the medium.  And in that quietness and, often, solitude, there is deep joy, as the subtle lines weave a web of timelessness.

Curator and participating artist, Sherry Camhy, also included a fascinating conversation with Dr. Bruce Weber in the Silverpoint Exhibition book. Dr. Weber had put silverpoint back on the art world map in the United States in 1985 when he curated The Fine Line at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida.  He talked  with Sherry of the integrity of drawings done in silver, emphasising the importance of being true unto the medium.  Gerhard Richter talked of this same aspect of art: "I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false."

Sherry Camhy selected silverpoint drawings that ring true, that speak of joy in execution.  They are drawings of many diverse subjects, approaches and contexts, but they form a shimmering song to the discipline of draughtsmanship.

The Silverpoint Exhibition, National Arts Club, New York

It is fun to start reading the reviews of this silverpoint drawing exhibition organised for December 2013 by a wonderful silverpoint artist and friend, Sherry Camhy, especially when one is far from the New York art scene. Seeing the images of fellow artists fills me with fascination and admiration. As always, the diversity of optic and subject matter is unified by all of us having to obey the demands of this medium of mark-making in silver, and sometimes in other metals too.  Metalpoint is a harsh task-mistress but each of us is in thrall to the fascinations and subtleties of these drawings.

Perhaps the most atmospheric introduction to the Silverpoint Exhibition at the National Arts Club is a video done by Odelle Abney. Then there is a long review by Robert Edward Bullock, in Bullock Online Reviews of Tuesday, December 10th, 2013, Beautiful Tarnished Lines. Or try another one,Saving Silverpoint, by Jeffrey Carlson, published in Fine Art Today, the e-newsletter for Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.

My drawing which was selected for the exhibition is one I did of the Spanish Moss variety which grows in north Florida, Tillandsia recurvata.  I love its jaunty, elegant flowers and twisting tufts of tendrils.

Tillandsia recurvata, silverpoint and white gouache on tinted ground Jeannine Cook artist, Private collection

Seeing the images in the reviews makes me excited to receive the hardcover catalogue which has been produced for the exhibition.    An enormous amount of work has gone into the preparation of the show, and I am grateful to be part of this lovely venture.  It makes me every more keen to go on drawing in silver!

The "Other" in Art

Sometimes, when reading a book that seems far distant from art at first blush, you get insights that are definitely thought-provoking.  This happened to me as I was finishing a really interesting book, "The Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram.  It is a book which, to me, makes one think mostly about the extraordinary, damaging divorce between mankind and care of the planet in which we all live.  Abram advances some very valid suggestions, tracing the original transformation in man's thinking about being an integral part of the natural world to the development of the alphabet and the gradual loss of oral traditions.

However, it was in one of the notes that I found a comment about art that seemed to be worth pondering.  I quote it, with thanks to the author:  "Genuine art, we might say, is simply human creation that does not stifle the nonhuman element but, rather, allows whatever is Other in the materials to continue to live and breathe.  Genuine artistry, in this sense, does not impose a wholly external form upon some ostensibly "inert" matter, but rather allows the form to emerge from the participation and reciprocity between the artist and his materials, whether these materials be stones, or pigments, or spoken words.  Thus understood, art is really a cooperative endeavor, a work of co-creation in which the dynamism and power of earth-born materials is honored and respected.  In return for this respect, these materials contribute their more-than-human resonances to human culture."

I feel a little diffident about posting two drawings that I did in silverpoint which I feel were indeed groping towards the "Other", but in some sense, they were.  One I drew because on the coast of Georgia, particularly on the barrier islands, there are thousands-year-old shell rings left by the Guale Indians where they came, year after year, to the coast to feast on nature's bounty in the marshes and salt water creeks.  The Indians' presence is almost palpable, and in many ways, I feel we should do them honour as they were far better stewards of these lands than we seem to be in the 21st century.  The other drawing is a meditation about the elements that are integral parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, humble pieces perhaps, but each a vital link in that mountain ecosystem, and beautiful each in its own right.

At the the Shell Mound, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Blue Ridge Mountain Meditation, silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

Looking at and communing with "earth-born materials" as I draw and paint bring peace and coherence, I find.  I think David Abram is right in his observations.

Quiet Moments in Art

This morning I was listening to NPR Saturday Edition when Scott Simon interviewed New Republic film critic, David Thomson, about his new book, Moments that made the Movies.  During the conversation,  Thomson talked about the power of quiet moments, or looks or lines, in films that are remembered long afterwards - think Casablanca, for instance. Thomson went on to say that during those quieter moments, we are more able to think ourselves into the scene as viewers, shaping our perception of the film, and thus, later, remembering those moments more vividly than more action-packed scenes.

The conversation made me reflect that in essence, the same reaction often occurs in the visual art world, as each of us walks through a gallery or a museum, looking at art work.  For me personally, many of the works that remain with me, long afterwards, are not the paintings of "sturm und drang", the high voltage works that leap off the walls.  Instead, indeed, the quieter works have more resonance, more power to stay with me and come floating back into my mind's eye to delight again. Obviously, each of us has a different character, different tastes and a different life experience which we bring to the viewing of the art.  Nonetheless, when the art is elegantly quiet, simple and impactful, it often lends itself to being "expanded" by each viewer and allows an "ownership" that then becomes part and parcel of the viewer's experience.

One of the most fascinating examples of a quiet work that I have met is a minute drawing that I have only ever seen in reproduction,  Measuring a little over 4 x 3 inches, it is a silverpoint drawing, Horse and Rider, done by Leonardo da Vinci in 1481 as part of a preparative study for his commission of an altarpiece,  the Adoration of the Magi, in the Church of San Donato a Scopeto, outside Florence. 

Horse and Rider,Leonardo da Vinci, silverpoint, 1481

This tiny drawing, which was consigned for sale in 2001 at Christie's by the late J. Carter Brown, once Director of the National Gallery in Washington, was so esteemed that it fetched the astonishing price of £8,143,750 ($11,474,544) before transaction costs. Clearly, this is a piece of art that haunts people.  Its immediacy, the skill in depicting the foreshortened horse and its motion, its utter simplicity all make it an astonishing piece of art.  I know that it is the first piece of art to comes back to me when I begin to think of art that I have long remembered.

Usually, the works of art that have the most impact on me as I go around a museum are ones that I can guarantee will not be readily obtainable as reproductions in postcards, books, etc.  I seem to have a gift for liking things that are not the popular ones by museum standards - I don't know what that says about my tastes!  However, one remembers, as much as possible, and the magic floats back into my mind at times from those quiet beauties.

Other works that have retained their influence over me range from Alfred Sisley to Chardin, Fatin-Latour to Rothko and beyond - a totally eclectic mix, I acknowledge.

Carafe of Water, Silver Goblet, Peeled Lemon, Apple and Pears, 1728, (Image courtesy of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe)

White Lilies, Henri Fatin-Latour, c. 1883, (Image courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum)

Purple and Blue, Mark Rothko

Each of us has a different collection of remembered quiet moments when art has resonated and stayed with us.  Its diversity and power to uplift, move and inspire come with moments of contemplation and emotion. Those encounters are what  make art so extraordinary and so necessary.

"Motifs" as Mirrors of the Artist

During my stay at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France, I found myself with the eternal conundrum – to work en plein air or to work in the studio. Partly, in truth, the colder weather made the choice a bit easier, but nonetheless, I was constantly aware of the tug of war internally, for I love to be out in natural surroundings to try and create art.

The other side of the equation is that in the studio, conditions for working are more organized and it is easier, physically, to work, particularly in metalpoint, which tends to be slower and more demanding of time and energies.

However, at the back of my head was a quote that I had read about Monet. He wrote, “All ‘motifs’ are mirrors – or else the project of plein airisme is as shallow as Baudelaire had once argued. The painter’s transactions with the ‘motif’ have as many dimensions as his sense of self and of his place in the world.”  ("Motifs" are subjects and themes in a work of art.)

It is true that one brings to any artwork a sense of what matters, in most cases at least, and I think that when the work is done outside, perhaps the additional, often subliminal, messages are just as important. Man’s “communion” with natural surroundings underpins everything, whether or not today, we realize it.In general, ignoring nature imperils us in so many ways, as we keep finding out.

For an artist, in particular, the web and waft of nature informs every gesture, every impetus, consciously or not. Thus when an artist works outdoors, there are so many complex and often enriching issues that influence the execution of a piece of art.

The other challenge is of course that there are indeed all those other considerations. An artist has to make choices, sometimes quick choices as light changes, or the scene disappears, or whatever. How to distill what one is trying to say, how to select the most simple and hopefully impactful aspects, how to mediate between a considered, controlled choice and a much more spontaneous, perhaps less “finished” piece of art, especially a drawing. Those are other aspects of plein air work. Each of these choices means that the work becomes a mirror of that artist, his or her sense of place in the world and self-definition.

I came across a lovely example of these simple artistic choices: last autumn at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a wonderful place, there was an exhibition of silverpoint drawings that the American artist, Marsden Hartley, did.

He travelled in the 1930s to the Bavarian Alps and there, he drew a series of silverpoint studies that captured the spare geometries of these mountains. Very simple, very direct work – Hartley was communing with those mountain landscapes.

Marsden Hartley, Mountain Landscape with House in Foreground,  (September 16, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Waxenstein,  (September 13, 1933). Silverpoint on paper. 14 7/8 x 10 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Michael St. Clair.

Marsden Hartley, Mountain Landscape , September 1933. Silverpoint on paper.

Travelling south from Hamburg to Garmisch-Partenkirchen,in the Bavarian Alps, Hartley apparently produced 21 of these spare distillations of the mountains. 

Hills by the Lake, #2, silverpoint on paper, 11 x 15 inches, Marsden Hartley (Image courtesy of the Ownings Gallery)

Marsden Hartley produced a body of work that validates Monet's observation about "motifs" or subjects being mirrors of the artist.

Talking about Silverpoint

It has been a while since I could get to this blog – mainly because I am back for the second half of an art residence at DRAWinternational in France, and there is a certain fever of creativity.

No comments on whether the results are good or bad!

But the days fly past with the privileged situation of only requiring that one thinks about art, how to do something that pushes out boundaries and grow. Such luck! Nonetheless, there is the more serious side of the residency, namely giving and talk and demonstration to the public.

Of course, I suggested that I talk about my passion, metalpoint-silverpoint, and then had to spend some time putting together a serious survey of the history of this medium. That is always a fascinating exercice, and it reminds me how many different voices there have been and are today in this rather restrictive medium of drawing with a metal stylus on prepared paper. Selecting examples of contemporary metalpoint to show my audience how varied, elegant and imaginative are the silverpoint voices drives home to me what a special medium this is.

This is the poster/invitation to Sunday’s presentation – which I will give in French.

Poster for my Talk on Metalpoint at DRAWInternatioonal

Meanwhile, I draw and draw, experiment and try to balance long hours of sitting with vigourous walks up hill and down dale in this delicious medieval village of Caylus. The weather is totally unlike usual Mediterranean September weather, in that it is distinctly chilly.

No matter, another layer on and get down to drawing!  In other words, vive l’art and art residencies!