Thinking out loud on paper

I am back to drawing in silverpoint, tackling a large study of lily seed pods which have been "talking" to me for some time since I rescued them from the winter struck garden last year.

Since silverpoint, a medium that makes marks with a silver stylus on a prepared ground, precludes any erasures and thus requires a little thought and planning, I found this quote resonated : "Drawings were always ways for artists to think out loud on paper...". This was said about an exhibition of Old Master drawings in the Scholz Family Works on Paper Gallery at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame (www.nd.edu/sniteart/collection/printdrawing/index.html), where it was also pointed out that drawings were called "studi, schizzi, pensieri" in Italian.

It is true that one does think, possibly out loud when alone, in the midst of drawing. As I started working with these majestic seed pods of a Madonna Lily, I kept thinking of the role of the Madonna Lily in all the Renaissance Annunciations paintings that I have seen over the years. The famous ones, by Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticello, Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) or Fra Filippo Lippi, are joined by many others painted by Italian Renaissance artists on canvas or fresco. The custom that the Angel who announces the amazing news to the Virgin Mary should carry a spray of Madonna or Regale Lilies seems to have pertained from the mid-1400s onwards, for about 50-75 years. Looking at a large selection of images on Wikipedia Commons (http://www.commons,wikipedia.org/wiki/category:Renaissance_paintings_of_Annunciation), it is fascinating to see how "standardised" the lilies were for all those artists.

Beyond the Renaissance memories, I keep thinking that these lily seed pods are metaphors for proud, elegant women who have born children and grown in stature and grace as they watch their progeny disperse. Their bone structures are refined and beautiful, they hold themselves erect, despite advancing years, they epitomise distilled, condensed wisdom and lore.

Enduring Elegance, (regale lily seed pods), silverpoint,  Jeannine Cook artist

But as I think these thoughts, and many others, as I draw, I am left wondering if I will convey any of this when I finish this drawing... who knows? I can but hope so, but, in the meanwhile, I still have a lot of drawing, and thinking, to do!

Sunlight and Shadows

Today is a day of heavy flat light, laden with humidity and heat, here on the Georgia coast. All contours are softened, distances are blurred and somehow the scene is flat and almost featureless. It is a day that makes me long for the bright sharp sunlight of the Mediterranean. It also makes me realise how much landscape artists are influenced by the ambient light.

Think, for instance, of Japanese artists. Down the ages, in their nature-based art, the Japanese have been very aware of the play of light on rocks, trees, architecture. Shadows, the corollary of sunlight, are a natural function of their architecture, for example, with the broad eaves on buildings casting wonderful angled shadows. The ultimate interpretation of the beauty of light can be seen in their black lacquer ware, flecked with gold or silver. Viewed by lantern or candlelight, this lacquer ware evokes their northern, sea-influenced light in haunting fashion.

At the other extreme are Western artists who work in the brilliance of Mediterranean light. Take, for example, two of Spain's artists, Joaquin Sorolla from Valencia and Joaquin Mir from Barcelona. Sorolla was multi-faceted in his art, ranging from wonderful luminous portraits to vast historical paintings and, my favourites, landscapes flooded with light. In fact, a quote by Edmund Peel from James Gibbons Huneker, in the book, The Painter, Joaquin Sorolla, says it all: "Sorolla – the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal". It is interesting to study Sorolla's paintings: many of his landscapes which include figures have dramatically bold, abstract shadows (such as his paintings of Valencian fisher women). Yet landscapes done in Javea, Valencia or Malaga, in mainland Spain's Mediterranean coast, are often painted in a very narrow range of values, without dramatic shadows. Even more deliriously high key are some of his depictions of the almost incandescent cliffs and headlands in Mallorca, especially the sun-drenched scenes of Cala San Vicente in the north-east of the island.

"El mar en Mallorca" , Joaquin Sorolla

Interestingly, Mallorca, with its amazing light, was also the springboard for Joaquin Mir's greatest successes. A contemporary of Sorolla (who lived from 1863-1923), Mir was born in Barcelona in 1873 and lived until 1940. Colour and light were the keys to his art : "All I want is for my works to lighten the heart and flood the eyes and the soul with light", he said in 1928. He forged his own path to celebrating the Mediterranean sunlight and shadows, sometimes veering to realism, other times towards abstraction, but always seeking to interpret the beauty he saw in a delirium of colour and light. He borrowed the Impressionists' palette of colours, eschewing black, but he used the colours in his own highly original fashion. When you see Mir's works done in Mallorca, you can feel the wonderfully clear light pulsating over everything - the Es Baluard Museum has a number of these canvases (http://www.esbaluard.org).

Joaquim Mir i Trinxet (or Joaquin Mir, 1873-1940): Canyelles

Perhaps evoking the clarity of Mediterranean light will help banish the Georgian grey skies of humid heat – I can but hope!

Revisiting "a Sense of Place"

I live in a place where trees - live oaks, red cedars and pines of many types - are a wonderful characteristic. They grace the area with shade and distinction, they offer shelter to innumerable birds and animals and they ensure a cool green world even when temperatures are soaring elsewhere. I have grown to love many of them as individuals, whom I have watched grow in size and majesty over the years.

November Light, Jeannine Cook artist

It was thus with horror and desolation that I rounded a corner this week, on a walk, to find men with huge machines finishing the cutting down and annihilation of some of the most wonderful old. and healthy, pines in the neighbourhood. They apparently "obstructed" the view for a new house, and although they had existed for many a long year, they were cut down in a matter of minutes. One of them had become a particular friend for I had done a large pastel drawing of it.

When you sit and draw something as complex as a tree, you learn of its elegantly logical growth, the marvels of engineering which ensure that its branches can reach out to catch the sunlight and yet remain at an angle that is stable for the whole "edifice" of the tree. You also can get a serious crook in the neck, as I found in this case, as the pine tree was so tall. Another delight, as one sits quietly, grappling with the drawing, is that all the birds, raccoons, snakes or other denizens, just come and go about their own world and ignore you.

My sense of this area has been violated this week, alas. Now I have to readjust, mourn the passing of wonderful creations, and move on. I wonder how many other people regard the cutting down of wonderful, healthy trees in the same fashion? But I am glad that at least I tried to record one of the trees in a drawing.

The Health of the Art World in the US

Wow, the preliminary report out from the National Endowment for the Arts (http://www.nea.gov/) about Public Participation in the Arts in 2008 makes depressing reading. "Persistent patterns of decline in participation for most art forms...", "Fewer adults are creating and performing art...", "Educated Americans are participating less than before...", etc. etc. Not cheery reading. Not only because it spells very hard times for all forms of activity in the arts world, but also because, to me, it presages continued impoverishment of the human spirit. Without art of one form or another, we are rendered less outward looking, less understanding of others, less able to find enrichment in our lives.

The best parts of the initial NEA report findings concern the Web. "The Internet and mass media are reaching substantial audiences for the arts", and "About 70% of U.S. adults went online for any purpose in the 2008 survey, and of those adults, nearly 40% used the Internet to view, listen to, download or post artworks or performances." Not surprising when one knows of the phenomenal growth of Facebook, for example, or when one watches what is happening in Iran at present thanks to the Web and connected media. More and more, it seems, our lives are being interwoven with the Web, and as an artist, one is keenly aware of needing to keep up and try and function in this new world. The rub, as always, is having enough time in the day to create art, deal with the Web, and still function as an ordinary person.

Nonetheless, when all is said and done, the Web is still only the vehicle that links visual art to a person who enjoys viewing it and, ultimately and ideally, a person who enjoys living with the art in daily life, off the Web. There is still that all-important dialogue that takes place between a piece of art and the person viewing it. This is where the NEA figures for museum attendance (an estimated 78 million or 35% of U.S. adults) are confirming what most museum directors already know with concern and alarm. Those dialogues with artworks are becoming less frequent, for previous years, such as 2002, showed that about 40% of adults went to museums.

A long article in the June edition of ART News (http://www.artnewsonline.com/) examines the role of museums and what the different directors are trying to do to stay viable and successful in the future. The options ranges from trendy to futuristic. Nonetheless, as Thomas Campbell, new director of New York's Metropolitan Museum, underlines, a great museum still has one essential mission : to enable a visitor to have that supreme experience of standing in front of some object, painting, drawing, sculpture, whatever... and "Suddenly you're responding to something physical, real, that changes your own perspective." That is what the arts are about, and that is why we need to keep the arts alive and healthy.

The Luster of Silver exhibit

Time is marching on towards the survey of contemporary metalpoint drawings that I helped curate for the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History (http://www.emuseum.org/). The exhibit opens on June 28th, 2009. There is going to be a reception on 27th June, at which I will be speaking, along with my co-curator and marvellous artist friend, Koo Schadler http://www.kooschadler.com/). There will also be a gathering of many of the twenty-seven artists included in the show, which will be great fun as many of these very talented artists do not know each other in person, only through the Web.

To my delight, today, June 15th, on ArtDaily.org (http://www.artdaily.org/), the advance announcement of this exhibition ("Evansville Museum to present a Survey of Contemporary Silverpoint Drawings") has been published, along with one of the images I submitted from different artists. I have to admit that I am pleased - mine was chosen - Creighton Bones (after C. Pissarro). It was a large silverpoint drawing that I did based on a huge cow shin bone that I had picked up on a nearby magical Georgian island, Creighton. Silverpoint is perfect for high key subjects like white flowers, bones, shells...

Creighton Bones (after Pissarro), silverpoint, Jeannine Cook artist

I had remembered a tiny drawing Pissarro had done of the backside of a cow and it seemed the perfect way to pay homage to Pissarro, one of my favourite artists for his affinity to natural beauty of all types. This drawing is now in the permanent collection of the Evansville Museum.

"The eye is not enough..."

I found a wonderful quotation from Paul Cezanne in this week's Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com) . It was in an article about the French in Aix-en-Provence fighting the high speed railway that is possibly going to pass through the area Cezanne immortalised in his paintings of the area - think Mont Sainte Victoire, for instance (http://www.iblblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/st-victoire/). Cezanne was explaining his decision to leave the fast-paced urban sophistication of Paris and return to Aix, a very provincial, traditional, almost backwater town. He said, "The eye is not enough, reflection is needed".

Mont Sainte Victoire, 1895, oil on canvas, Paul Cezanne (Image courtesy of Barnes Foundation, Lower Merion, PA, US

It is a statement that goes back, in some ways, to the sense of place, and the need to allow that place to seep into one's subconscious. He was talking, I believe, about needing time to think deeply about what was important to him, what he wanted to try and say in his art in a genuine fashion, untrammeled by the much more relentless pace and demands of a big city. Some people thrive in a pressure-cooker environment, others don't. Cezanne had struggled to advance in his art in Paris, he had haunted the Louvre and frequented many other talented artists. But I suspect that many of us artists come to a stage where time and mental space are needed to allow changes and progress in the art we are trying to accomplish.

Cezanne also knew his home area well. He knew how and when the light would move over landscapes that he felt deeply about and thus wanted to explore in what would be innovative watercolours and oils. He knew the best seasons and times of day at which to paint Mont Ste. Victoire, for instance. He had the time to reflect on such rhythms and use them to his advantage. His canvases of the Jas de Bouffan landscapes show the same awareness of season and place. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_C%C3%A9zanne)

Jas de Bouffan. The Pond, c. 1876, Paul Cezanne (Image courtesy of the Hermitage Museum)

He could reflect on how he wanted to depict still lifes, the people he knew well in Provence, the landscapes he loved. He had more time in Aix to create art that was pioneering, adventurous, highly individualistic and daring. He had been prescient to say that "the eye is not enough, reflection is needed". Perhaps we all need to remember this wise advice in our own paths in the art world.

Blog Followers

Threading one's way through the multiple options on a blog site, let alone anywhere else on the Web, takes time. As an artist, it seems to be the eternal tug of war about allocation of time between art and the Web.

Nonetheless, the icon of "Follow Blog", up on the top left-to-middle of the top bar of the blog is apparently the easy way to ensure that you can return to my blog if you want to. Just follow the very simple instructions and you can then find the blog again without difficulty.

I would be delighted if you did. I love starting conversations with old and new friends.

Living Longer as an Artist

Years ago, I remember seeing a wonderful film about Marc Chagall in which he came across as a vigorous, delightful man, even though he was by that time well in his eighties. At the time, I was impressed at how, clearly, being an artist was an invigorating, rewarding way of life that kept one healthy and vital.

the Concert, Marc Chagall, 1957, oil on canvas, Private collection

Little did I realise at the time that I would myself become an artist - I was a linguist, a writer and many other things but not yet an artist. However, the more deeply I became immersed in the world of art, the more I found it to be deeply satisfying and rewarding. So it was with amusement and interest that I recently read of yet another study which confirms that creative people live longer. In fact, they apparently live on average seven years longer than the average population. And that is not all. More sexually attractive, more charismatic, and better at finding new ways to solve problems: artists are no longer just regarded as bohemians, apparently!

The aspects of problem solving make a lot of sense, in fact. New ideas being formed show up as activity in the front part of the brain, which in turn are changed and assimilated by the memory and experiences part of the brain, found in the centre of the brain. All this activity means that the various neural connections are activated and enhanced. Everybody can be creative, artists don't have any exclusivity in this domain, and everyone can enhance their brain activity. If you go for a random walk or do something you don't normally do, avoiding any preconceived plan or pattern, you open the way for new ways of seeing or reacting to the world about you.

Interestingly, this ability to embrace new concepts and then assimilated and remember them has also led humans (and a few other primates) to be one of the only species able to perceive reds and yellows in the colour spectrum. It is theorised that man watched fruits turning red or yellow and learned that that was a sign of the fruit being ripe enough to eat. In turn, the fruits evolved to ensure that their signs of ripeness, reds and yellows, were clearly visible: they would then be eaten and their seeds disseminated for furtherance of the species.

Definitions of Art

In June's issue of ARTNews, there is a long article about art which only happens once because you, the participant-viewer, happen to be experiencing it. Without you, there is no art. In other words, countless artists today are challenging the definitions of art way beyond the video, performance, installation, happening – all the diverse art creations we have seen proliferate.

By these definitions, is the traditional "art-object" likely to go the way of the dodo? This whole issue has been wandering around in my head as I worked today on a silverpoint drawing. It is all a little ironic. I endeavour, like countless other artists, to create a piece of art that is not only predicated on concepts of art that have existed very nicely, thank you, for at least eight centuries, but I also try to be mindful of doing things in a way such that the archival qualities of the piece are assured to the maximum possible. I have read enough already about the expensive headaches that curators and conservators are having in many museums as they try to preserve the artwork done last century with all sorts of less than permanent materials. Today, too, we read of the technical problems museums and collectors are encountering when they purchase cutting edge videos and other technological marvels. Before too long, the ever-galloping changes in technology leave these pieces high and dry on the flood banks, out-of-date and unusable as the equipment not longer exists. Some collectors are getting careful about requiring the artist to guarantee that the lifespan of the art is ensured.

In our headlong world, I often feel that the actual quality of art has, in recent times, become of secondary importance to the new, the trendy, the cutting edge and thus the attractive flavour of the moment for those who have had lots of money to spend. Considerations of longevity of the art, let alone its potential "timelessness", have seemingly been cast aside on many occasions.

As one now reads of the continued strong market shown by blue chip Old Masters and work that has been done in the more traditional media, it makes one wonder : what next? The serious, educated collector will always exist for whatever definitions of art pertain. But what future lies ahead for those of us who quietly go on trying to create art that can, if deemed worthwhile, last for at least a hundred years? One has to hope there will always be enough diversity among the publics of the world to ensure support of all types of art. Always assuming that we are not all collectively shortening our viable time span on earth through climate change... If we are, it becomes pretty academic at some point as to what type of art each of us creates! Perhaps that is the very point of the art which only happens once, when one is lucky enough to exist to experience it. That is worth pondering.

A Sense of Place - Mayo Clinic version

The Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.com/ and http://www.mayoclinic.org/) celebrated the twentieth anniversary of its Arizona campus a couple of years ago. To mark the occasion, six ladies, led by Dr. Caswell and Ms. Currier, created a quilt triptych about the flora, fauna and Mayo campus in Arizona. It has been displayed in Jacksonville at the Mayo Clinic this year and once again, it underlines how a sense of place, and knowledge of that place, can lead to utter beauty of creation.

Brilliant colours finely balanced and composed, wonderfully imaginative beading and often three-dimensional quilting, choices of fabrics to enhance each component in the quilt - the triptych is a visual feast. The six ladies knew their world. There are saguaro cactii, indigenous palo verde trees and flowers, quails, owls, the Arizona mountains and wide dramatic sunset skies as backdrop. Into this highly evocative and lyrical landscape, the Mayo buildings and different aspects of their medical world are woven and nestled. There is life and movement, yet enough detail to delight the eye on closer inspection. It is a wonderfully evocative, intricate piece, a real labour of love.

A small part of the 20th anniversary Mayo Quilt done in Scottsdale, AZ

Watching people's reactions of wonder and delight as they spotted the quilt hanging in a wide corridor and came to have a closer look made me realise afresh how a passionately felt "sense of place" can be magical. The amazingly successful collaboration of these six needlewomen/artists has created a vibrant, intense work that will be long remembered. It is also an eloquent statement about the Mayo Clinic itself. It certainly made my day at the Mayo a memorable visit.