Creating art in beautiful places

Sometimes the stars all align, the weather goods smile benignly and one finds oneself able to create art in a truly magical place. That was what I felt about being on Sapelo Island this weekend, when I finally got to return as SINERR Artist-in-Residence with Marjett Schille.

For two days of glorious weather, (the azure cloudless skies and gentle temperatures type of weather), we were free to go where we pleased and just devote ourselves to art. There is a marvellous transition: you get on a ferry and leave behind daily life. You only need to concentrate on choosing a site suitable for the next plein air painting or drawing. Considerations of light, time of day for that light, where the tide is (if you are working along the beach), what medium is suitable for the next project: those are the weighty matters to ponder! All against the backdrop of a most beautiful and ecologically diverse island that is protected and preserved.

Marjett and I tumbled out of bed early each morning and were hard at work by eight to catch the wonderful morning light raking the sand dunes or sculpting trees. We worked steadily until the picture got finished, or finished us for the moment. We both did about three pieces a day, with Marjett working larger scale than I did. As I had planned, I did mostly silverpoint drawings, which seemed to take an age to do compared to Marjett's swiftly executed watercolours. Later, we assessed what we had done and "titivated" anything that needed adding or correcting. Since we have worked together a lot, we both respect the other person's eye for critiques. For me, it is a wonderful opportunity, as I tend to work alone and don't often have another artist to assess what I am doing. It is always a perfect learning opportunity when one has that luxury. It is also fun to share ideas on what title to give the work done, for titles are an interesting and sometimes polemical subject.

Sapelo Island with Lighthouse,  Georgia

Now we are back "on the hill" as the locals refer to the mainland – and the weekend remains glowing in my mind. The artwork needs to get scanned and catalogued, and life already begins to knock at the door again. Nonetheless, when one is lucky enough to be able to go off and create art in a truly beautiful and magical place, it is more than luck.

Silverpoint drawing ahead!

I cannot believe it - the weather gods are finally relenting enough that I can get to Sapelo Island this coming weekend to be Artist-in-Residence again with my friend, Marjett Schille, courtesy of the Sapelo Island Estuarine Research Reserve. This is the third time we have planned this - third time lucky, I hope!

Hello, Sapelo Island

I have been packing my supplies for a plein air weekend, with lots of warm clothes as I don't think it will be that warm. But the main care has been to prepare enough paper so that I can get my teeth into some silverpoint drawing. I cannot wait!

Preparing smooth board or paper - archival of course! - with gesso, titanium white acrylic, Chinese white gouache or casein is the ritual one follows before embarking on a silverpoint drawing. The silver particles are pulled off the stylus by the very fine rugosity (fine, fine sandpaper, in essence) of the ground on the paper - that is how the silver marks are made.

Working outdoors, with shortened days at this time of year also means that I needed to prepare smaller sizes of paper for silverpoints. There just is not enough time to work on a large drawing, as this is a slow and meditative process. In order to achieve any serious darks in a silverpoint drawing, you need to let one layer oxidise, and then go back carefully over it again to lay down a slightly darker layer. All this takes time. If the weather is humid, there is always the danger of scoring the drawing surface when you go back over a previous layer of marks, so care is needed.

Sapelo Island, Georgia

Nonetheless, silverpoint drawing seems to me to be an interesting vehicle to try and capture the luminous clarity of the marshes and vegetation in the salt-laden world that is a barrier island like Sapelo. Time will tell if I achieve any decent drawings... or perhaps I will have time too for some watercolour paintings. If the weather gods allow...

Colour in art, colour in our eyes

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humblebaek, Denmark, has just opened an exhibit entitled Colour in Art. They combined works from their own collections with others lent by major collectors, Werner and Gabrille Merzbacher, to explore the role of colour in art and thus in daily life.

Colour underpins most artists' concepts in some form or another. The most obvious domain of colour in art is in paintings, done in many media. The perception of colour has changed considerably over the last 150 years or so, as societies and cultures have evolved. There has also been a huge evolution in the actual production of pigments and types of paint, which have increasingly allowed more brilliance and a more flexible approach to the creation of art.

Colour choices can be very personal, as we all know from the famous example of art to match the sofa demonstrates. Every choice we make in decorating our home is involved with colour in some way or another. So it is is no surprise that for an artist, the absence of colour (in a monochromatic work) or its presence - and in what fashion - both dictate a great deal about the creation of that particular work of art. Once created, artwork will then appeal to people through the colours used, to a great extent, whether the collectors and viewers realise it or not. Moods are created through a certain spectrum of colour, and people respond to those harmonies, even if only subliminally.

The Fauves - Andre Dérain, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Albert Marquet and others - used a bright, almost strident palette of broken colour to evoke the brilliant light and intensity of colour in the landscapes of the French Mediterranean coast. Nothing downbeat at all. By contrast, Picasso's Blue Period paintings are almost monochromatic and convey deeply gloomy and sombre sentiments. Picasso's close friend, Carlos Casagemas, had committed suicide in Paris in 1901. This affected Picasso deeply, and the resultant paintings of that period use colour to convey the melancholy and resignation he experienced.

Pablo Picasso, Self-portrait, 1901, (Image courtesy of Musée Picasso, Paris)

The exploration of colour intensified as the artists of the mid-19th century began to move outdoors from their studios (mostly set up with northern constant light). They then got all excited about conveying the brilliance of light and its ever-changing qualities, when they worked plein air. After the Impressionists had pushed out the boundaries of colour use and perception, the field was wide open for everyone to experiment. Thus the Fauves and everyone else who followed, up to our time.

Meantime the development of new artificial pigments, types of paint binder and their presentation in the marketplace were following a parallel explosion. This is explored in the Louisiana Museum show, Colour in Art. There is also the interesting dimension evoked of the commercial use of colour, for logos, advertisements, etc., and the same colours used in art. As is cited in the article on this exhibit on ArtDaily.org, the blue which Yves Klein developed for his famous brilliantly intense canvases would be unlikely to be confused with the blue used in the logos and names of the United Nations, the European Union or even Nivea cream. In other words, context of culture influences our perception of colour. I am sure that in our digital (and globalised) age, where colour is intensified even more than previously, even cultural perceptions are constantly evolving.

IKB 79. 1959, Yves Klein, (Image courtesy of the Tate)

Nonetheless, there is another dimension to colour, particularly in art. I found it an interesting juxtaposition to read about the Colour in Art exhibition and very soon afterwards, to find the following quote by Marc Chagall on Renée Phillips' Manhattan Arts International website: "In our life there is a single colour, as on an artist's palette, which produces the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love (my emphasis)".

Something for us to think about.

How much should one change one's style as an artist over time?

I have read a couple of enthusiastic reviews of an exhibition currently showing at New York's Onassis Cultural Center entitled The Origins of El Greco, the last of which was in February's edition of ARTnews. With a subtitle of Icon Painting in Venetian Crete, the show examined El Greco's early work when he, along with a flourishing school of artists, was a Master of religious icon painting in his native Crete in the 1560s. Young Domenikos Theotokopoulos was most skilled in creating shimmering gilt surrounds and stiffly gesturing figures that were part of the Byzantine heritage of Crete.

Adoration of the Magi, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (later known as El Greco), 1565-67, painted on part of an old chest, (Image courtesy of the Benaki Museum,Athens)

It is hard to credit that these early paintings are done by the same artist whom we know as El Greco, the artist whose elongated figures, clothed in strangely coloured garments, twist in religious fervour beneath dramatic skies. Ascetic-looking men with long faces gaze skyward with clasped hands of piety, while impossibly long-limbed men writhe and contort through the paintings. This later El Greco was, as a review of this exhibition by The New York Times' Holland Cotter observed, the result of "an ambitious career on the move" with Venice and later Spain his sources of patronage and success. By the time El Greco died in 1614, his style of painting had evolved radically from a strict medieval icon tradition to an expressionistic approach that embraced light, movement, colour, passion.

The Baptism of Christ, c. 1614, El Greco, (Image courtesy of Museo  Fundacion Lerma, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo)

This account of the El Greco exhibition made me reflect on the problem-cum-challenge we all face as artists: how to evolve and grow, and yet remain true to ourselves? The examples of artists who have changed their styles over time are innumerable - Picasso is a salient example, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, and so many others. But in our times of emphasis on marketing and branding, when presenting ourselves to the world as artists, how important is it to have consistency?

There is always the temptation for a successful artist, selling well in one type of art or with one approach and subject, to stay in that idiom, and if a gallery is involved, often there is more pressure to stay in the successful lane. Yet we should all be striving to grow as artists, and by definition, that means change and, hopefully, improvement. Sometimes, repetition of one type of art, one subject or medium, allows for a more profound and rewarding exploration. Yet repetition can become boring and a dead end.

There is also another message, I think, in the El Greco or Picasso examples of evolution as artists. That is that we must believe in ourselves as artists and dare to grow and change, even if it means abandoning a successful style and pathway in one's artistic career. Radical change takes courage. Artist Sharon Knettell, writing in the March 2010 issue of The Artist's Magazine, explained that she gets much of her inspiration for paintings while meditating and remarked, "I think meditation makes you fearless. You have to go to the point where your ideas scare and challenge you" (my emphasis).

I believe that point is when you dare to change your style because that inner voice tells you to take the next step in changing and evolving as an artist. What does anyone else think?

Discovery of a wonderful draughtswoman, Sky Pape

Just recently, I read of an exhibition opening at New York's June Kelly Gallery entitled "Water Works: Surface Tension", with drawings by Sky Pape. I was intrigued and delighted: this Canadian artist, living in New York, is creating drawings that I find beautiful, sensitive and highly unusual.

Sky Pape is pushing out the boundaries of the definition of drawing in a way that marries physical - and I mean her whole body, not just arms and hands - with intellectual and true global awareness. She uses the traditional drawing media - save for silverpoint, apparently - but in totally new fashions. Her papers are from many sources, but all with environmental and societal considerations. Tibet, Nepal, Korea and Japan are some of the paper-making sources, and she views her work as "a collaboration with those distant paper-makers in Asia", as she folds, cuts, amalgamates and reverses the different types of paper to create her work.

Untitled (Image 4584), 25"h x 38-1/2"w, water and Sumi ink on handmade kozo paper, 2010

Her mark-making media range from graphite to coloured pencil to ink - humble, traditional and simple media, but she uses them in very different fashion. For instance, she blows ink through tubes and funnels onto these handmade Asian papers that she has spread on the floor. Building on her belief that drawing is at the centre of any art, she is combining a physical expressiveness with a recognition that the paper is part of the creative dialogue, and it too symbolises nature in all its manifestations. The minimalist and elegant drawings that result from these unusual approaches are evocative, and satisfying - even seen in digital form. How much more worthwhile they must be to see in person, one can only imagine.

Having had the fun of studying many of her drawings on her website, I am not at all surprised that she will be spending March this year in Bellagio, Italy, on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are many many wonderful draughtsmen working today, but I am always thrilled to find an artist who is not only pushing out the boundaries of drawing media but going so in an uplifting fashion that makes me go "Ah!" with pleasure and interest.

"Untitled (5467)," water and Sumi ink on handmade kozo paper, 25 x 30-1/2 inches

See what you all think of Sky Pape.

I wasn't the only one thinking of Henri Rousseau

Little did I realise that there would be a major exhibition opening on Henri le Douanier Rousseau when I wrote about him on 3rd February on this blog. Let me add the information.

The Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, has just opened an exhibition on Rousseau, as I learned from ArtDaily.org. Small portraits, landscapes of suburbs and the French countryside, as well as larger works of his jungle themes are apparently complemented by photographs, one of Rousseau's great interests. Examining Rousseau's role as a pioneer of modernism was the major thrust of curators Philippe Buttner, Curator of the Fondation Beyeler, and Christopher Green, Professor Emeritus for Art History at the Courteauld Institute, London.

Tiger in a Tropical Storm, (Surprised!), Henri Douanier Rousseau 1891

I quote from the ArtDaily.org article: "Rousseau introduced a new approach to imaginative vision into painting. His perception of reality was based primarily on observation, imitation and transformation of the visible. In this way he taught modern artists how things known could be constructed using the building blocks of the known. He established a new logic and mechanics of compositional structure that profoundly affected subsequent artists, all the way down to the Surrealists."

The Dream, Henri Douanier Rousseau, 1910 (Image courtesy of MOMA)

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

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

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

Belted Kingfisher Megaceryle Alcyon by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

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

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

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

Thinking about Henri le Douanier Rousseau

I was in a waiting room yesterday, idly leafing though a magazine which detailed the 2006 Henri Rousseau exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. As I looked at the small reproductions of some of his paintings, memories came flooding back of the first time I had met his work.

I was a young girl, working and studying in Paris, and assuaging my homesickness for Africa by spending many hours in the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, the Musée de Cluny, etc. One day, at the Jeu de Paume, I rounded a corner and came face to face with one of Rousseau's famed Jungle paintings - I am not sure now which one. I was dumbfounded. The painting was so unlike anything else that I was seeing on museum walls; it was seemingly tropical and yet did not ring true at all to me, since I was from the Tropics. The flat, vibrant depiction of these huge, urgent leaves and flowers, growing on strange plants and trees came across as totally hallucinatory. The monkeys swinging from the trees, and other touches of "exotica" were almost perverse in their nuances. The painting left me intrigued.

L'innocence archaïque, Le Douanier Rousseau, (Image courtesy of the Musée d'Orsay.)

I learned more in due course about this late-blooming artist, Henri Rousseau, who was born in 1844 and was just ahead in age of another self-taught artist, Paul Gauguin, who embraced the tropics in even more extraordinary fashion. Henri Rousseau had the sobriquet, Le Douanier, added because his main employment, after the military and sundry other activities, was as a minor clerk in the local Customs office. His fellow Customs officials must have been a supportive crowd as apparently they gave him duties which allowed him to devote a lot of time to his art. Despite the recurring theme of tropical vegetation in many paintings, Rousseau never travelled to the tropics: his sources for the plants were the botanical gardens in Paris, especially the Jardin des Plantes. Another large body of work in his very varied opus was paintings of urban-suburban landscapes, complete with chimneys, the Eiffel Tower, streets and tree-lined parks.

Many of these paintings were based on small studies and drawings he did from real life - one of the early plein air painters, in fact. His approach to painting was that of a true Outsider, for he did not follow his contemporaries - Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Seurat, etc. - in their perspective, their realistic depictions, their use of light or even their use of paint. He painted in a flat, decorative fashion, often ignoring traditional perspective, with a Naif optic on subject matter and presentation. Nonetheless, he was eventually recognised as an artist with a great deal of charm and a wonderful imagination, offering a very different version of art. This was despite the long years of derision which greeted the works he submitted to the Salon des Indépendants from 1886 onwards. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Edgard Degas began to see in his work a move away from the prevailing naturalism in art, and by the early part of the 20th century, Picasso, Signac and others were showing enthusiasm for his work. Dreamlike worlds, with tigers, serpents, monkeys and buffalo peering though the "jungle", alternate with somewhat airless urban landscapes, portraits, still life studies and other pieces which do indeed prefigure Surrealism. Catalogue images, early photos, books - everything was grist to Rousseau's mill to mix with his everyday observations in these imaginative compositions.

If you want to spend time in a 19th century version of an alternate universe, albeit one which is the product of a fertile imagination allied to a direct vision, then look at Henri Le Douanier Rousseau's art. He led the way for so many later artistic trends - and, most importantly, he believed in himself even in the face of derision and rejection. He just kept on painting, and by the end of his life, in 1910, he knew much success and esteem.

Artists' Webs of Support

Most artists are fairly solitary people, per force. It is therefore all the more magical - and important - when there is a web of people around who support, encourage and empower artists.

I have been reminded once again of this aspect of life. Living in a very rural part of coastal Georgia, artist friends usually live far away. Networks of fellow artists are much more present, in today's world, through the Internet and other such communications, than previously. That helps a lot. But artists' nearest and dearest family members are probably the most important sources of encouragement, honesty and appreciation. It makes a great difference if an artist can trust and respect the opinions and observations of a spouse, for instance. Whether it is painting, drawing or writing, I know that if I see a look of puzzlement or quizzical amusement on my husband's face, I need to go and do some rethinking about the project. He is the one who always reminds me, "Keep it simple" – very necessary often as I tend to love detail. He is my most respected critic.

The web of support. Spider's Web

Beyond family and fellow artists, there are other circles of support that are invaluable. Gallery personnel, if an artist works through gallery representation, forms the first circle, but for many of us who prefer to represent ourselves, the collectors of one's art become an important part of life. Many, many of the people who have been nice enough to like my art have become dear personal friends - a wonderful bonus. Their encouragement, especially when they return to acquire more art, carries one though periods of self-doubt. They help one to "hang on to one's star" and to continue listening to one's inner voice that tells one to go on trying to grow as an artist.

Another shining circle of supporters, that makes me feel validated and very lucky, is comprised of museum curators and directors, professionals in academia, the arts and others whose own achievements I hugely respect. When I turn to them for help or advice, I am very aware of the value of the support given by these busy people.

When I feel I am floundering as an artist, I remind myself of all these support webs around me. And then the word that comes into my mind is, "Adelante!" – a simple Spanish word for "get on with it!". And off I start again as an artist.

Definitions

Here I am, defining myself for many a long year as an artist, and yet, yesterday, I was brought up short. I was reading a short article by Ruth Walker entitled Art, Artisans and artisanal grilled cheese in the January 24, 2010, edition of The Christian Science Monitor. In this article, Ms. Walker addresses the origins and meaning of the word "art". I realised that I felt totally ignorant about the whole subject. Abjectly ignorant!

I rushed off to my beloved Oxford English Dictionary to learn more. I knew that "art" came from the Latin "ars", a word that passed into French and then into early English, as did so many words. But the timing and nuances of meaning for "art" were fascinating. The first use of the word comes in 1225, when the word meant skill in doing anything as the result of knowledge and practice. According to Ms. Walker, the original Latin concept embraced a skill of things being "joined" or "fitted together". By 1386, Chaucer was talking of art as a human skill or human workmanship, as opposed to nature, while earlier that century, art was already included in general learning taught in schools, as well as the skills required in applying the principles of a special science.

Only in 1600 did the word "art" start to refer to the application of skills to subjects of taste such as poetry, music, dancing, etc. J. Taylor is cited in the OED as saying that, "Spencer and Shakespeare in art did excell". However, the use of "art" to refer to "the application of skills to the arts of imitation and design, Painting, Engraving, Sculpture, Architecture; the cultivation of these in its principles, practice and results: the skillful production of the beautiful in visible forms" only came into use after 1880.

From then on, art has mainly referred to the many aspects of the realm now referred to aesthetics, but it also now includes more negative aspects of studied actions, artful devices, trickery and cunning... hardly surprising!

What interested me, on digging further about the meaning of the word "art" as defined today, is how often that word "beautiful" creeps into the definition. In ReferenceDictionary.com, the first definition is, "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful (my emphasis), appealing, or of more than ordinary significance." In the Free Online Dictionary, they started the definition by, "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty (again, my emphasis), specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium". In the Brainy Quote, they talk of, "the application of skill to the production of the beautiful by imitation or design, or an occupation in which skill is so employed, as in painting or sculpture".

The other word which appears often in the definition of "Art" is nature. In Your Dictionary, the first meaning is, "human ability to make things; creativity of man as distinguished from the world of nature (my emphasis)". In Answers, art is "a human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature."

Whilst the 20th century saw many reactions against the concepts of beauty and nature in the visual arts, in particular, I think it is instructive that art has for so, so long been defined as having skills and knowledge that derive from and celebrate the world around us. After all, it was Plato who said that "art is imitation".

Plato. Luni marble, copy of the portrait made by Silanion ca. 370 BC for the Academia in Athens. From the sacred area in Largo Argentina.  (Image courtesy of the Capitoine Museums)