"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!

Improving the Capacity to Learn

I have been slowly reading an extraordinary tome while I listen to the early morning birdsong greeting the sunrise.

It is a huge book, but well worth reading: The Primacy of Drawing by Deanna Petherbridge is the result of ten years’ research and careful thought about drawing, in all its implications and manifestations.

With wonderful illustrations of drawings from a multitude of public and private collections, Dr. Petherbridge delves into all the aspects of historical and contemporary drawing approaches and philosophies.

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice (1485-90)

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most notable of the Renaissance artists to combine art with science in his endless quest to learn about the world around him.  Other artists, for centuries, have used life drawing, from casts or live models, as a way of learning about the human body and honing their artistic skills.

Life drawing class. c. 1890, (Photo courtesy Leeds Museums and Galleries (Art Gallery))

Deanna Petherbridge discusses many interesting approaches to drawing, but one summation, at the end of a chapter on “Drawing and Learning”, struck me as very apposite indeed in today’s world. I quote it in full, with thanks to its author:

"Learning to observe, to investigate, to analyse, to compare, to critique, to select, to imagine, to play and to invent constitutes the veritable paradigm of functioning effectively in the world.” (My italics.) 

I think that every teacher should think hard about including art, and especially drawing, in the preparation of today’s generations in school, college and university.

Everyone would benefit, now and in the future.

Art and Freedom

A wonderfully pithy statement made me think hard recently:

“To the age, its art; to art, its freedom.”

This was a remark made by late 19th century art critic and author, Ludwig Hevesi,who lived in Vienna.

One only has to think of all the daring experiments in art last century, as the innovators – from Braque to Picasso, from Mondrian to Miro, from Motherwell to Rothko, from Sol Le Witt to Richard Serra, from Agnes Martin to Dan Flavin - stretched the world’s definitions of art.

Site-specific Installation, Dan Flavin, 1996 (Courtesy of Menil Collection)

They did so in tandem with the inventors of technology and so many mechanisms that revolutionized our world in daily living, in waging war, in making love and in how we treat our planet. Every tenet of traditional art-making was broken or so radically reinterpreted that little remained of the look of art familiar to the Western world since the early Renaissance or before.

As to the second part of Hevesi’s statement, “to art, its freedom” – that requires more thought.

Picasso’s Guernica immediately comes to mind, for instance.  Picasso used his art to witness the atrocities visited by the Italian and German planes on the small Spanish town of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937 (Image courtesy of Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid)

In one sense, the statement means that art should be a political statement. However, I don’t think that all artists create work with politics in mind – cartoons, yes, as political commentary, and certainly films, if one includes them in the category of visual art.

Yet, willy-nilly, as artists, we are witnesses to our times; we create work that reflects our daily concerns and joys, our interests and the lives we lead within the context of our individual worlds. The people who then view the art created are participants in placing energy and time in that art, whether they “like” the art or not.

The art is, in essence, a symbol, a reflection, of that age or period in which they are living. The art signals what is important to the artist and thus can also alert the viewer to issues that are perhaps worth esteeming, preserving, celebrating – in other words, ensuring the freedom of those aspects of life that artists have highlighted.

Probably each of us has our own personal list of artworks that whisper to us of freedom. Freedom to enjoy viewing them, in the first place, without censure or fear; freedom to view them in a gallery, museum or private setting that translates into a society safe and affluent enough to facilitate such situations. Freedom to have the time and energy, and sometimes the money, to view the art; freedom to look at art with enough curiosity and, in some cases, some background education to understand at least a little about the art.

In other words, lots of freedoms that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted today, when we go off to a museum or an art gallery. Whether the art created today is a guarantor of freedoms in a wider sense is a more complex question.

Perhaps time has a part in that answer, because art has always been subject to fashion, and never more so than today. Certainly today’s wide-open diversity of art forms and approaches is indicative of great liberty in the art world and general acceptance by the public. Whether today’s art will endure long enough to ensure long-term freedoms for the next generations of artists, as was the case for many of last century’s pioneering artists with their work – only time will tell.

Perhaps, in the end, this simple statement, “To the age, its art; to art, its freedom”, reminds us to cherish art, the arts in general, so that we all – not just those who create – can ensure a world that is as free as possible from the prejudices and restrictions that limit. I am sure everyone can think instantly of places where this ideal situation does not currently exist.

Those are the places where works of art treasured down the ages are destroyed, where passions have obliterated a sense of ownership in beauty and culture, or where hard economic times have eliminated a sense of the need for art to enhance our lives in the deepest sense.

We all need to be passionate advocates for art for it is a hallmark of a civilized society.

Leonardo da Vinci and "Patchy Walls"

Leonardo da Vinci, that omniscient artist, once remarked, “I have seen shapes in clouds and on patchy walls which have given rise to beautiful inventions.”

We have all seen wonderful shapes in clouds as they sailed above our heads – that is a gift that one should never lose.

Patchy walls – that is another affair in today’s world.

Most cities are now more characterized by glass and steel and other slick-surfaced materials that don’t often inspire the imagination in the way that Leonardo meant. Yet, when we visit the older towns and villages of the world, particularly in areas where stone and wood have been the predominant building materials down the ages, the imagination can again take flight.

In Caylus, France, the walls of the medieval houses are a history of generations of people building, adapting and shaping the stones and bricks of their abodes. The abstract patterns and wonderful shapes delight and interest.

In fact, the whole region rewards the imaginative eye. See what you think.

Oak beam end (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus (artist's photograph)

Caylus' history in the walls (artist's photograph)

Another version of a patchy wall (artist's photograph)

Leonardo da Vinci would have been delighted in southern France. The walls lend themselves to all sorts of flights of fancy.  Just what an artist needs and wants!

Mingling Gothic Architecture and Contemporary Art

One of the delights of finding kindred spirits is that when they suggest a place to visit, you know that there is a very good chance that you too will find the place to be special.

This happened again to me the other day, during my artist-in-residence stay at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France.

John and Grete McNorton, who established DRAWinternational as a centre for artistic investigation, research and practice, are two very special people, along with their lovely daughter, with whom I rapidly felt deliciously at home. They told me of the Abbey of Beaulieu, a Cistercian abbey decommissioned during the French Revolution and now a National Monument and contemporary art centre.

Nestled in a green winding, wooded valley just north of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, in Ginals, in the Tarn et Garonne Department, this is indeed a magical place to visit.

Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

Originally founded as an abbey in 1144, the church was destroyed during the religious wars against the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. It was rebuilt from 1275 onwards, but was destroyed and rebuilt during the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the second half of the 16th century. From then on, until the French Revolution, the Cistercians had a difficult time surviving as their abbots were appointed directly by the King, as opposed to the Cistercian way of selecting an abbot.

Politics seem to enter every facet of life!

Then absurd hubris nearly destroyed the building as the new owners, after the Revolution, from the town of Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val; they wanted to move the whole structure, stone by stone, to their town. Luckily, the noted Prosper Merimee, one of the first Inspectors of National Monuments, stepped in and the building was saved by being classified a National Monument in 1875.

Rightly so, because after a joint restoration by the State and two enlightened citizens, Pierre Brache and Genevieve Bonnefoi, the abbey became a Centre for Contemporary Art, with the couple’s art collection left to the State as well. It is a wonderful, soaring, light-filled space in which to show art.

The day I visited, there was an exhibition of paintings and “boxes” by Montauban artist, Odile Cariteau, “Deambulations”. “Deambulation” in French means a strolling or a wandering, in this case a symbolic movement in time and space, linking an artistic and a monastic way of life.

Both modes of existence encompass realities other than the visible, experienced in solitude. Prayer and an artistic practice both dictate a particular way of life in their gentle unfolding of activity.

Interior of Abbaye de Beaulieu, with  Odile Cariteau's work displayed (artist's photograph)

The big black and white acrylic canvases held up well, if repetitively, in the high Gothic-arched, quite narrow simple nave, transept and choir. Niches were filled with boxes, “Interior Spaces” filled with divers material, alluding to alchemy. A little too claustrophobic for my taste, but interesting. Perhaps the most arresting were the “Primordial Walking Sticks”, complex ensembles of wooden twisted branches adorned with ceramic beads and threads.

In the cool 13th century Gothic cellar, apparently intact since it was constructed (a comment on French priorities when it comes to wine and wine-making!), Cariteau had echoed, to a degree, the convoluted forms of these walking sticks in huge kakemono paintings hung in staggered rows. “Writings from Afar”, some were elegant.

Vine outside Gothic Cellar, Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

The Abbey ensemble itself was far more compelling. The grassy lawn demarcated where the cloister had once been, and off it was the wonderful small Chapter House, with early 13th century, still polychromed massive arches and a feeling of great antiquity. It was a delight simply to sit quietly in the cool of this House and draw, somehow connecting with the monks of yore in their strict observance of an orderly, simple life.

Chapter House, Abbaye de Beaulieu (artist's photograph)

There is also a current exhibition of modern art in the upstairs former dormitory, a beautiful wooden structure with high, high ceilings. “Supports/Surfaces et Apres” examines this movement that started in the 60s and 70s in France, when artists wanted to break with painting as pure painting. Whatever the art exhibition currently on at the Abbey of Beaulieu, it is well worth a visit to this peaceful remnant of another way of life, still timeless and serene in feel.

Around, the grounds still offer beautiful walks, with flowers to gladden the heart and magnificent giant trees to shade one’s path.

A special place indeed.

25,000 years - What a Heritage as an Artist!

Visiting Pech-Merle Cave in France has been on my wish list for a long time, and this week, I achieved the wish.

What an amazing place and what a heritage we artists have in these cave drawings that early man created on the rock walls!

Location Map of Pech-Merle Cave, France

There is an astonishing mixture of the most beautiful stalagmites in columns, fans and banks with these seemingly smooth rock faces where those distant artists left their marks.

Enormous chambers, still dripping with moisture and forming more beauty in the limestone, have a sense of the spiritual, despite the fact that visitors are in groups, shepherded along by a guide.

Pech-Merle Cave

There is almost too much to see and absorb, too many shapes and formations to encompass; one longs to be able to slow down and linger. Alas, that is impossible because there is a limit of 700 visitors a day to try and conserve the freshness of the art work.

The cave was blocked by rock falls for many thousands of years, which helped conserve the drawings better than in other caves. Thus there is the obvious concern to keep them in a good state of conservation.

Those early, few artists were determined people. It is hard to imagine the effort it must have required before they even traced the first line on a rock face. Cro-Magnon man lived in the fertile Lot river valley far below. There, the artist must have first had to prepare charcoal in stick form or grind red ochre into powder, fine enough to be blown through a small tube. Then he (judging from the content of the Pech-Merle drawings, it had to be a “he”!) had to climb up the steep hills to gain entrance to the cave. Before scrambling into the cave down narrow, tortuous openings, he had to ensure he had enough, reliable light from his flickering, open flame torches. Then, once inside the chambers, he had to select a rock face he could reach, that was not too damp and that lent itself to the images he planned to draw.

Even the rock surface was rough, not an easy surface for mark-making. One of the remarkable aspects of cave art is that there are layers upon layers of work. Art was executed on the same surface with thousands and thousands of years in between. In Pech-Merle, the first frieze of black drawings – bison, mammoths, horses of extraordinary vigour and freedom, probably all done by the same artist – has red iron oxide dotted markings beneath that are thought to be done some 8000 years previously.

Early Blown  Pigment Hand Outline, Pech-Merle Cave

Mammoths and Horses - Black Frieze, Pech-Merle Cave

Young Mammoth, detail of Plack Frieze, Pech-Merle

The most famous of Pech-Merle’s rock paintings, the Dotted Horse Panel, is vast and breath-taking. I was lucky enough to happen on it a few minutes before the rest of our group, and being alone to contemplate this extraordinary complex work allowed a dazzling connection with those long-ago artists.

Dotted Horse Panel, Pech-Merle Cave

Hand outlined by blown pigment, detail of Dotted Horse Panel, Pech-Merle

There was an early, early depiction of a long, spotted fish in red ochre, half obscured by the later drawings of the horses. The artist who conceived of and drew the horses used the configuration of the rocks themselves to incorporate them into the drawing. The outline of the rock suggests the horse’s head and neck, and the drawings flow from there. All the marks were blown stencils of fingers, thumbs and hands – all used to further the depiction of these two stylized horses with their powerful bodies and diminutive legs with dots big and small. The work bespoke of a clarity of vision and execution that would defy most people today with far, far better working conditions. Remember, flaming torches only have a finite time to burn, for example.

What also fascinated me in Pech-Merle was that those early, early artists not only celebrated the animals of their world, but they also made abstract drawings – triangles, strange symbols… - as well as very stylized depictions of women, even bison-women.There is also a poignant stylized man, lying mortally wounded with spears traversing his body, near a geometrical symbol.Interestingly, it is thought that artist travelled some 40 kilometers to another cave to draw the same type of wounded man, with a similar symbol, but not directly adjacent to the man as it is in Pech-Merle.

Wounded Man and Geometral Sign, Pech-Merle Cave

I suspect that every visitor to Pech-Merle emerges into the light of day dazzled and enthralled.

The mind-stretching sense of time and connectedness to those astonishing artists left me humbled and yet almost exalted at the thought of the heritage we artists share with those mark-makers working some 25,000 years ago.

Thoughts on Ingres as a Source of Art

The other day, I attended an artist’s talk for an exhibition opening at the Ingres Museum in Montauban, a delightful small town in South France.

It was thought-provoking, albeit not perhaps quite as the artist intended.

Flyer for the Ingres Museum show on Vincent Carpet

Vincent Carpet is a French artist, born in Paris in 1958, who came to art because there seemed nothing else viable for him to do.

His career really took off, apparently, when he exhibited with two other artists in a very controversial show, Masculin-Féminin, le sexe de l’art, at the Centre GeorgesPompidou Paris. Since then, he has increasingly specialized in using an artist’s work to develop his own version of that work, often with what seems to be a very ironic eye.

It was in this context that he is now exhibiting his work in the Ingres Museum Montauban is Ingres’ home town and the museum owns a huge number of Ingres’ drawings and many important paintings. So Vincent Corpet was invited to select a number of Ingres’ works, paintings and drawings, and develop his own reactive work, to be hung alongside the original work. The show is called Vincent Corpet vit au long d'Ingres.

His talk at the Museum, given to a very small number of people, was ironic, rich in facile remarks and occasional honest moments, such as when he admitted getting totally bored with trying to find what else to do and say when faced with all the multitude of Ingres’ portraits.

Another such moment was when he said he couldn’t paint hands or feet, so he simply stuck his hand or foot in paint and walked on the canvas to leave the imprint. His method of work, apparently, is to make a black and white, quick and dirty copy of the original painting, with the canvas on the floor, as one personage.

He then changes to being another person, in his mind, and selects out things to emphasise and reinterpret, mostly with fantasy animals, upside down, sideways or whatever. He then changes again to another person and covers the rest of the canvas in some simple colour, painted on rather as one would paint a wall, it appeared. Only when the three stages are completed is the canvas placed upright.

Vincent Corpet at work

His drawings were simpler and more painterly, but very repetitive, with sexual forms predominating, with a lot of smudging, erasing the black with spirits to get tonal changes.

He had also made the selection of Ingres’ drawings to go with his drawings, but alas, many of them were so faint that they were almost invisible. He had apparently made a very quick selection on the web of these drawings, not seeing them in the original, which was perhaps sometimes unfortunate.

The overall impression on was left with after this talk was that this was an artist who had perfected the game of parleying his skills into a career in the official art world. Derivative and shallow art is apparently quite acceptable, as long as there is shock value. To me, his talk was short on depth of thought, and thus on impact.

Tackling a take-off of Ingres, himself very much a product of the 19th century traditional art world and not so hot on accurate drawing of the human body, for instance, is not an easy task. Nonetheless, the “translation” done by Vincent Corpet into 21st century idiom simply reminded me of the existence of a potentially shallow, transitory and basically ugly sector of today’s art world. 

In essence, the talk became a reminder to me personally as an artist that one needs to try to dig as deeply and thoughtfully as possible inside one’s own world, not to copy and not to be facile.

Not easy!

Diary of an Artist

Sometimes there are amazing obstacles thrown in the way of being an artist, I have decided.

I met one or two of them just recently as I set off on a trip to an art residency at DRAWinternational in Caylus, France.

Bell Tower of Saint Jean Baptiste church and houses in medieval town

I checked in to Vueling airlines for a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Toulouse, via Barcelona. All went predictably until I reached Barcelona. There, Vueling had blandly cancelled the flight to Toulouse, a flight for which a boarding pass had been issued to me not two hours previously!

No reason, no apology, no help from the extremely lackadaisical staff in the departure lounges.

Welcome to Vueling, the company that claims, "For us, flying is a true pleasure".

Some four and a half muddled hours later, I am boarding a bus for a nearly six-hour drive from Barcelona to Toulouse, courtesy of Vueling. The options offered had been a two-day wait for the next flight to Toulouse, or this bus ride – some choice!

A 3 a.m. arrival at the almost totally deserted and closed Toulouse airport enabled the bus/Vueling simply to dump us on the pavement.

Good luck, passengers, we hope you enjoyed your flight on Vueling.

I revived somewhat after some sleep and some strong coffee, enough then to pick up a delayed car rental and head off for Caylus.

I was perhaps lucky that the obstacles were not worse and that I could forget about the “invraisemblable” (unbelievable) trip as I was greeted at the delightful home of Grete and John McNorton, hosts of DRAWinternational.

The magic of the French countryside, the brilliant sunshine and cascading roses, the eloquent stone walls of a medieval small town that has seen much history in the Lot et Garonne, the indefinable savoir vivre that I so love in France. Despite Vueling’s nonsense and obstacles, I am conscious that it is delicious to be an artist again.

Art and Individuality

I think everyone responds to the glowing, liquid beauty of glass, with its essence of light playing through it in magical ways.  I have always felt that, for instance, one of the most amazingly rapturous places for stained glass in the world is Chartres Cathedral.

North Rose Window, The Glorification of the Virgin, Chartres Cathedral

South Rose Window, The Glorification of  Christ, Chartres Cathedral

My introduction to Chartres was walking into the Cathedral, cleared of all pews, as part of a student pilgrimage on foot from Paris.  The afternoon sun was streaming in, blue, scarlet, gold, but it was the overall impression of the blue that I remember.  It was the most magical serious introduction to stained glass, all the more amazing because most of it dates from the early 13th century.

Lower Window, Signs of the Zodiac, detail - Libra, Chartres Cathedral. c. 1235

Later, back in Paris, I learnt to love Sainte Chapelle's windows equally, but there, the slenderness of the stone structure adds to the extraordinary magic of the stained glass.  Despite its almost secular feel today, the stained glass takes one back to times when this was the chapel built by King Louis IX in the 1230-40s to house his scared relics, including Christ's Crown of Thorns.  Only the most wondrous of structures was worthy of such sacred objects.

Upper Chapel, Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

I was recently reminded of the magical sensations that these stained glass windows engendered in me while I was reading a truly beautiful book, Stained and Art Glass. A Unique History of Glass Design and Making, by Judith Neiswander and Caroline Swash.  The depth and breadth of the contents are impressive and of course fascinating, taking the reader from the earliest glass making up to 2004, (the book was published in 2005), in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia.

As the use of glass in architecture and in objets d'art increased in the last century, with new materials, techniques and a hugely increased interest in the beauty and properties of glass, so there has also been a divide that has grown up between individuality and more anonymous approaches to glass making.  This amazing medieval art form - stained glass - was a group creation, with very few windows ever signed.  Church windows told the illiterate faithful about the Scriptures through narrative or symbolism; there were just a few books written on the subject of glass manufacture itself.  By the last century, however, glass had become an art form where individuals can become like Dale Chilhuly, often described as the rock star of glass.

Dale Chilhuly, Collection at the Morean Arts Center, Florida

Dale Chihuly, Seaform Detail, Tacoma

In this Neiswander/Swash book, there is an interesting quote by Patrick Reyntiens, a noted British glass artist who translated John Piper's designs into stained glass for Coventry Cathedral, for example. In 1990, writing in The Beauty of Stained Glass, he remarked, "On the one hand, 'art' is the triumph of the individual, the prophetic side of man - the liberation of people's aspirations.  It is the guarantee of individuality and personal worth.  On the other, 'design' is the expression of the sinews of society, of those activities that hold the whole of the fabric of society together"

I think that this is a really perspicacious remark - it also pertains to every single creative discipline. Every artist endeavours to further his or her individuality, basically in order to survive and succeed in that creative field.  We all seek to have our own voice ring out, our own optic and means of expression.  Of course, every artist suffers serious pangs of self-doubt and angst, but also learns to follow doggedly that star, that small inner voice that one has to trust.  "Aspirations", the "prophetic side of man" - they are the pathways to artistic individuality.

Reyntiens is correct about design being "the sinews of society".  One only has to think of the astonishing architecture of our times, the urban planning and design of our burgeoning cities, even the intricacies of  software or Web design...  There may be individuals who stand out in the design world, but their creations tend more to the impersonal, the machine-made, the anonymous, made on a far larger scale than any artistic creation every could be. In essence, made for the underpinnings of our society.

Glass, stained, etched, blown, cast or shaped, is one of the most perfect media to demonstrate this dichotomy in the world of creativity. It allows artists to excel as individuals, while lending itself to wonderful old and new enhancements to societal life.