We have been Around a Long Time as Artists!

What a perfect beginning to the New Year! If I ever doubted that, as an artist, I am following a very ancient and venerable tradition, I had fascinating confirmation that I - and every other artist in the world - follow in extraordinarily ancient footsteps.

I read today that a mussel shell, found over a hundred years ago in Java, Indonesia, but recently re-examined, was apparently decorated by our hominid ancestors, Homo erectus, at least 430,000 years ago. No wonder the press was agog in early December, onwards.

Mussel shell with zigzag patterns from Java, dated between 540,000 and 430,000 years old

Yes, 430,000 years ago! Someone engraved zigzags like an "M", a couple of parallel lines and a reversed "N" shape on the mussel shell. Another shell found had a deliberately sharpened edge that was polished to serve as a cutting tool. So abstract art and even symbols apparently existed many, many thousands of years before Homo sapiens made his/her appearance and made engravings in South Africa.

430,000 year old mussel shell, Trinil pseudodon, closeup

Engraved zigzag patterns found on mussel shell, dated to at least 430,000 years ago, from Java

I think this is the perfect inspiration to salute the New Year. We go back a very long way as artists, and that liberates each of us to do what sings in our hearts and impels us to create.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Serendipitious Thoughts

Every artist knows the magic of an idea suddenly hitting when least expected. Often these serendipitous thoughts form the basis on which to create, often something new and adventurous. They help push out new creative frontiers and make one think in different ways. Sometimes it is an idea that reaffirms a direction on which one is embarked already. Other times, it awakens curiosity and  suggests new lines of investigation. Let me give an example.

My fascination with silverpoint drawing led me, just recently, to marvel at a displayed copy of the huge and wonderful St. John's Bible. This work of art and devotion was created by a team of artists and theological scholars at the Benedictine St. John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Central Minnesota, under the leadership of Donald Jackson, Scribe to Her Majesty's Crown Office at the House of Lords in London. Fulfilling a life-long dream of creating a modern illuminated Bible, linking ancient spiritual texts with the 21st century world, he was eventually commissioned in 1998 to create the St. John's Bible. Its final lines were penned in 2011. The resultant, magnificent creation, 2 feet by three when the Bible is open, is written by hand on vellum, with 160 illuminations, each one of which is absolutely mesmerizing. These are just  some samples to incite you, I hope, to look at more of them and see them in real life if you get the chance.

First Page, Gospel according to St. Matthew, St John's Bible, Donald Jackson

The Creation, Genesis I, Opening Page, St John's Bible, Donald Jackson with contribution by Chris Tomlin (Image courtesy of St. Hubert.org) Psalm 107, Book V Frontespiece, St. John's Bible, Donald Jackson with Sally Mae Joseph scribe (Image courtesy of St. Hubert.org)

Revelation - Valley of Dry Bones, St. John's Bible, Donald Jackson

The Ten Commandments, St. John's Bible, Thomas Ingmire artist

I loved looking at the amazing illuminations on display, but behind my fascination lay two questions: Did the artists draw the illuminations out in silverpoint before they painted them with tempera and inlaid gold leaf, as happened in medieval times? And did Mr. Jackson lay out lines on which to write his text with leadpoint, as did the early monks?

Elisha and the Six Miracles, St. John's Bible, Donald Jackson in collaboration with Aidan Hart

I was able to ascertain that no, neither silverpoint nor leadpoint were used in this creation of the St. John's Bible.

So that made me wonder about other frontiers. Now I need to find out about some other amazing creations - the extraordinary portolan charts and nautical maps created in the 14th century by the preeminent Mallorcan map makers, among whom Abraham Cresques and his son, Jehuda, were the most renowned. Since all those early, early maps arose from the monastic tradition of illuminated manuscripts and were often created contemporaneously to the Books of Hours and other sacred works, I suspect that indeed metalpoint came into use during the maps' creation. But I need to hunt further to confirm that.

Catalan Atlas, 1375, Abraham and Jehuda Cresques, (Image courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

Europe -Mediterranean portion, Catalan Atlas

Detail, Catalan Atlas, 1375 (Image courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

1375.Cresques.16

CatalanAtlas

Jaume Ferrer

1389 Mappamundi, Jehuda Cresques, comissioned by Juan I of Aragon

When you gaze at these complex works of science and beauty, the 14th century equivalent of Google Maps for the seamen of that time, large charts created painstakingly on vellum, it is with the same amazement as I experienced with the St. John's Bible. But now I need to find out if those artists drew their illustrations and lines with metalpoint.

There was something else connected to the St. John's Bible that helped reaffirm ideas that are rummaging around my head for future art projects. The Mission Statement included on the label describing the copy of St. John's Bible on display had a pithy list of actions that are the perfect springboard for serendipitous ideas. Some of them are:

Ignite Imagination Revive Tradition Discover History Foster the Arts Give Voice

All wonderful thoughts of how to go on exploring metalpoint drawing, a medium of antiquity equal to the early medieval religious bibles, of exactitude for exploration of aspects of the natural world and, at the same time, a medium of wonderful possibilities for today's artistic voices.

Creativity

Everyone uses the word. Everyone feels that intuitively, they know what "creativity" means. Everyone also knows that it is a highly desirable quality to possess. Yet the definition of creativity is not so easy. The Oxford English Dictionary succinctly puts it as "The use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness." Wikipedia gets broader in concepts: "' the production of novel, useful products' (Mumford, 2003, p. 110). Creativity can also be defined 'as the process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile' or 'characterized by originality and expressiveness and imaginative'." The article goes on to add that there are countless other versions of definitions.

Of course, in the art arena, creativity is deemed indispensable if the artist is in any way to be successful. Yet, as we all know, there are so many versions of artistic expression that most are considered creative only by a few viewers. Only the truly exceptional are heralded by most people, and until very recently, the culture of each country also played a part in the degree of appreciation of the work created.

What set me off thinking about the concept of creativity was a wonderful expression I read in a marvellous new book, "The Churchill Factor" by Boris Johnson (Mayor of London Boris Johnson). Discussing Winston Churchill's amazing abilities, particularly in the World War II period, Johnson says, "he (Churchill) also had the zigzag streak of lightning in the brain that makes for creativity."

It is so often just that aspect, the "zigzag streak of lightning in the brain", that allows for unorthodox approaches, solutions that come out of left field, images configured in a wholly novel way, vivid writing that none else has achieved.

In art, for instance, every generation has had truly creative people who have broken out of the mould and done things differently. The Renaissance was full of artists - think, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Durer, Titian - developing linear perspective, depicting landscape in naturalistic fashion, executing portraits of people in realistic fashion, modelling with light and shade. Later generations perfected oil painting, shifted the focus of Western art to Mannerism - such as Tintoretto or El Greco.  Then the Baroque artists flourished, like Caraveggio, Rubens or Rembrandt, and on the artists marched. Look at some samples of the different ways artists worked down the centuries.

Virgin of the Rocks, 1483-1486, Leonardo_da_Vinci_- (Image courtesy of the Louvre)

Bacchus and Ariadne, Titian, 1520-23, (Image courtesy of The National Gallery, London)

St. Martin and the Beggar, 1597-99, oil on canvas, El Greco, (Image courtesy of the Widener Collection, National Gallery, Washington)

Portrait of Susanna Lunden(?) ('Le Chapeau de Paille') probably 1622-5, Peter Paul Rubens, (Image courtesy of the National Gallery, London)

By the 19th century, art needed some more innovatively creative artists and the Impressionists came to the fore, with Manet, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro leading the way. Creativity certainly flourished with Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cezanne, as they laid the groundwork for 20th century artists to find entirely new paths to follow in creating art in tune with their tumultuous century.

Tahitian Woman with a Flower, Paul Gauguin, 1891 (Image courtesy of NY Carlsberg Glyptotek)

Mont Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine (c. 1887), Paul Cezanne, (Image courtesy of Courtauld Institute of Art)

Perhaps another aspect of creativity as it zigzags through the human brain is that it very often has, as a springboard, the social and cultural context of the time. To me, creativity is partly a spontaneous phenomenon arising in some wonderfully imaginative human mind, but it is also like a seed that has been planted in soil fertile and well watered enough for the seed to germinate, grow and flourish so that others see and appreciate it.

Only when Churchill was at the helm during World War II could his multifaceted creativity flower so successfully as he led his country out of peril and to victory in 1945. In the artistic world, the Leonardo da Vincis, Titians or El Grecos needed the powerful patrons of the land and Church to enable to give successful expression to their creative skills.

Later artists have had a harder time finding patrons and supporters to allow them to create and to live decently, a situation known to most artists at one point or another. And does creativity flourish as fully and successfully when the artist is worrying about the next meal or the next rent payment? In every field, from art to architecture to engineering or technology, the same considerations pertain - how to ensure the optimum conditions so that human creativity can flourish. In truth, our collective future depends in large part on that zigzag flash of creativity in the human brain.

Five Images a Day

Every artist is told - practice, practice, practice. But it is not always easy to do this, since life tends sometimes to get in the way. So finding a way to keep doing art is always important but nonetheless often challenging. However, I listened with interest to an interview done on NPR a couple of days ago by Rachel Martin. She was talking to famed photographer David Hume Kennerly about his new adventures with his iPhone 5 which he used as a camera. Having pared down his equipment to this one "camera", he set out to photograph the world around him in a very simple fashion, returning to basics of observation and curiosity.  The resultant book, "David Hume Kennerly On The iPhone: Secrets And Tips From A Pulitzer Prize-winning Photographer", has just come out.

David Hume Kennerly

He set himself the challenge of going out into his neighbourhood and taking at least five photographs a day, trying to look at the familiar and perhaps even the trivial around him in a new fashion. It was a way to sharpen his skills and extend his powers of seeing. In other words, it was the perfect example of practice, practice, practice to improve as an artist.  It was, as he described, his "photo fitness workout".

The parallel I made, as I listened to Mr. Kennerly talking - and remember, this is a revered photographer and Pulitzer prize winner talking - was the advice to go out with a simple, small drawing book and drawing tool. As a visual artist, I have always considered drawing to be the basis of understanding whatever it is that I am seeing in the world around me.

It takes seconds to make marks on a drawing book page - but whatever you are drawing then "belongs" to you. You know it, understand it better, remember it. It has become an integral part of you by the actions of mark making as your eye, brain and hand interact to record that simple object or sight.  Countless artists, down the ages, have done this.

Page from sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Sketchbook, (image courtesy of the British Museum)

Having absorbed the image, it is then easier to edit and strengthen it, transmute it to something else. In other words, you can create art. Just as Mr. Kennerly created art through his simple medium of the iPhone, so each of us can use the image captured as the springboard to something else. Or just use the moment as a "limbering up", an exercice to keep eye/brain/hand coordination and skills.  Just look at what Turner did in his wonderful sketchbooks.

Joseph Mallard William Turner, 1831 sketch. (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

A Tower, 1831, Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Study of a Tree, with a Line of Trees Beyond, circa 1789, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775-1851 (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Sketch of an Interior; Also, a Renaissance Church Tower, circa 1831, Joseph Mallord William Turner (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

The Blue Rigi, 1844, watercolour, Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775-1851, (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

The Channel Sketchbook, c. 1845, watercolour, Joseph Mallord William Turner (Image courtesy of Tate Britain)

Five quick drawings a day - a diary of one's voyage through life as you look around you, a record of moments of fascination and interest. And a way of remembering each day that your passion in life revolves around art.

Not a bad bargain to make. David Hume Kennerly's example is a wonderful one to follow for us all, in whatever version of art-making.

Evaluating Art

Changing gears from producing art to matting and framing art for exhibitions is always a bit of a wrench, I find. I don't know if others find it to be so. First of all, of course, it depends on what the exhibition is to be about, and where the show is to be held. An exhibition in a museum is different from one in a gallery where your art is for sale, and the choice of artwork to exhibit will correspondingly be different. Not of less quality, nonetheless. Any professional artist will always try to put the best work out for exhibition, no matter where.

However, deciding on what the "best work" is can be an interesting exercice. I think any artist is always excited about the latest work done, and hopes and believes that it is better than previous work. Nonetheless, I have privately decided that whenever possible, it is good to put the art just completed aside for a while, so that I can then come back to it with a fresh eye. Only then can I have any distance and can better evaluate its merits and/or defects.  I sometimes feel a little like the meandering salt water rivers entering the coastal Georgia marshes, such as I painted once.

A Day at Julienton, watercolour, artist Jeannine Cook

I am in the throes of trying to do just such an "agonising reappraisal" of work I had put away in a drawer, all carefully stored in mylar envelopes for the metalpoints and acid-free tissue leaving for the watercolours. First of all, I needed to sort through to try to make a coherent ensemble for a solo exhibition I am holding in January-February at the new gallery for Glynn Visual Arts on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Having selected out some art, then comes the more critical, eagle-eyed time. And that is the hard part!

March at Butler Island, graphite, artist Jeannine Cook

Having winnowed again, the resultant selection has to be matched up with types of mats - 4 ply or 8 ply museum mats. Next come their shades of white and cream (I tend to be super conservative in mat colours, trying to let the artwork speak for itself). Then what type of frame, what colour of moulding? So many decisions. And all part of the evaluation process because until the artwork on paper is matted, glazed and framed, you really do not know how it will finally look.

So I scratch my head a lot, turn the artwork upside down, walk away from it, come close to it. I play light on it (especially for metalpoint drawings because the metals shimmer when you catch them in the correct light and really come alive). I fiddle with mats, mouldings, skin my fingers screwing and unscrewing moulding pieces – such fun!

Cedar Lines. gold-silverpoint, artist Jeannine Cook

At the end of this whole evaluation process, which I suspect is familiar, in some form or another, to every artist, one just hopes that the result is an interesting, uplifting ensemble of art that appeals to the public.

Stay tuned for January's news!

Wisdom from Dame Barbara Hepworth

When I re-read a lecture that British sculptor, Dame Barbara Hepworth gave about 1953 to a group of surgeons, it seemed well worth repeating (courtesy of the Bowness, Hepworth Estate). Barbara Hepworth was a very good draughtswoman, and as a result of her daughter, Sarah, spending time in hospital in 1944, she became close friends with Norman Capener, a surgeon who treated Sarah at the Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter.  He invited her to be present in operating theatres in Exeter and at the London Clinic, during surgical procedures, so that she could draw different scenes of the operations.  As a result, she produced, between 1947-49,  nearly 80 drawings of operating rooms in pencil, chalk, ink and oil paint on board. She became fascinated by the similarities between surgeons and artists, particularly with the rhythmic motions of hands.

The Hands, 1948, oil & pencil on panel, Barbara Hepworth, (Image courtesy of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery)

Concentration of Hands II, 1948, Barbara Hepworth, (Image courtesy of Bowness, Hepworth Estate)

She wrote, after being in the operating theatre in Exeter, "I expected that I should dislike it; but from the moment when I entered the operating theatre I became completely absorbed by two things: first, the co-ordination between human beings all dedicated to the saving of a life, and the way that unity of idea and purpose dictated a perfection of concentration, movement, and gesture, and secondly by the way this special grace (grace of mind and body), induces a spontaneous space composition, an articulated and animated kind of abstract sculpture very close to what I had been seeking in my own work."

Prelude II, Barbara Hepworth,Bowness, Hepworth estate (Image courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

In her c. 1953 lecture, she reiterated this unity of idea and purpose.

"There is, it seems to me, a very close affinity between the work and approach both of physicians and surgeons, and painters and sculptors. In both professions, we have a vocation and we cannot escape the consequences of it.

The medical profession, as a whole, seeks to restore and to maintain the beauty and grace of the human mind and body; and, it seems to me, whatever illness a doctor sees before him, he never loses sight of the ideal, or state of perfection, of the human mind and body and spirit towards which he is working."

Tibia Graft, Barbara Hepworth, Hepworth Wakefield (Image courtesy of Bowness, Hepworth Estate)

Prevision,Barbara Hepworth, Bowness,Hepworth Estate (Image courtesy of The British Council)

"The artist, in his sphere, seeks to make concrete ideas of beauty which are spiritually affirmative, and which, if he succeeds, become a link in the long chain of human endeavor which enriches man's vitality and understanding, helping him to surmount his difficulties and gain a deeper respect for life."

Concourse 2, 1948, oil & pencil on pine board, Barbara Hepworth, (Image courtesy of the Royal College of Surgeons of England)

Concentration of Hands II, 1948, Barbara Hepworth, (Image courtesy of Bowness, Hepworth Estate)

Fenestration of the Ear, Bowness, Barbara Hepworth, Hepworth Estate; (c) Sir Alan Bowness (Image courtesy of Leeds Museums and Galleries)

(c) Sir Alan Bowness; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

"The abstract artist is one who is predominantly interested in the basic principles and unifying structures of things, rather than in the particular scene or figure before him."

Theatre Group III, Barbara hepworth, (Image courtesy of Manchester City Galleries)

Joaquín Sorolla and the Sea – Part II

My last blog post was on Joaquín Sorolla's approach to plein air painting, after I saw the CaixaForum exhibition, "The Colour of the Sea" in Palma de Mallorca. His "Colour Notes" are so fresh and searching, so bold and gestural, that I sometimes felt that the resultant paintings, in which this carefully observed material was incorporated, lost a little in impact. Nonetheless, the exhibition shows beautifully how Sorolla, set up on the beach in very practical painting fashion, was ever-intent on capturing the endless changes of the seascapes. His meticulous studies of the different hues of blue, for instance, show his passion for capturing the limpid colours of the sea, the play of light on the waves or on bodies in the water, their diversity of tone. Yes, he was basing all his art on Nature, in a realistic fashion, but he certainly was breaking down what he saw into the most abstract of shapes and compositions.

Young Yachtsman, 1909, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea and Rocks, Javea, 1900, oil on canvas, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The Sea, (Javea), 1905, oil on cardboard, Joaquín sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Look, for instance, at the Young Swimmers. Their skin underwater becomes a shimmer of alabasters floating in this energy-filled abstraction of green ripples and dancing light.

Swimmers (Javea), oil on canvas, 1905, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Another canvas that interested me in the flattening of the perspective is Marie at the Beach. As in other paintings he did of contrejour light on cliff tops, Sorolla flattened out the distances: the sea below is virtually on the same plane as Maria, because one senses his total fascination with the sea and its restless play of light and foam.

Marie on the Beach, (Biarritz), 1906, oil on canvas, Swimmers (Javea), oil on canvas, 1905, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The translucence of white fabric, seen contrajour against the sea, is another of his favourite subjects. Just out of the Sea demonstrates this marvellously; it is all about that luminous, undulating light blowing in the wind, contrasting with the glowing solidity of the mother and small boy, all rendered tangy in the salt air and the susurration of the turquoise sea.

Just out of the Sea, 1915, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The marine landscapes are all about luminosity, distance being dissolved into pure colour. Sky and sea are his fascinations, his challenges.  No wonder he stated, ""I could not paint at all if I had to paint slowly. Every effect is so transient, it must be rapidly painted.”

Mar de Zarauz, 1910, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Breakwater, San Sebastian, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

His 1919 works done at Cabo San Vincente in Mallorca are pure colour hymns. No wonder he is loved by so many for these celebrations of the sea, one of Spain's greatest beauties in his lifetime.  We are lucky that he recorded his country's coastal scenes before they were transformed by 20th-century mass tourism.

Cabo San Vicente, Mallorca, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Esmeraldas de la Cala San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Una Barca en la Cala de San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Helena en Cala San Vicente, 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Joaquín Sorolla and the Sea - Part I

An exhibition, "Sorolla: The Colour of the Sea" has just come to Palma de Mallorca via the CaixaForum, having travelled to various cities in Spain in larger or smaller version. The paintings and oil on board studies have been lent by the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. They reflect Joaquín Sorolla's passion for the sea, despite the fact he was not born at the coast. They also testify to his enormous skill in working en plein air, at great speed, trying to be faithful to the every-changing light, the restless sea in all its moods and the feel of the place in which he was painting.

Rocas de San Esteban, Asturias, 1903, oil on canvas, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sorolla commented, "Me sería imposible pintar despacio al aire libre. No hay nada inmóvil en lo que nos rodea. El mar se riza a cada instante, la nube se deforma, al mudar de sitio – pero aunque todo estuviera petrificado y fijo, bastaría que se moviera el sol, lo que hace de continuo para dar diverso aspecto a las cosas. Hay que pintar de prisa porque cuanto se pierde, fugaz que no vuelve a encontrarse!”. Roughly translated, Sorolla said that it was impossible for him to paint slowly en plein air. Nothing stays still around us. The sea ripples continuously, clouds change their form as they move, and even if everything were totally still, even cast in stone, everything would still change in aspect because the sun moves all the time. You have to paint quickly because so much gets lost, some much is fleeting and will never return.

Any artist who has worked outdoors knows exactly what Sorolla was talking about.

Sea at Ibiza (study for Smugglers), 1919, oil on canvas, Joaquín orolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The exhibition showed a fair number of oil on cardboard, small studies, "Colour Notes", and for me, they were the most fascinating aspects of seeing the show. In this first blog entry on Sorolla, I will concentrate on them, as far as I am able to find decent images. First of all, you see Sorolla responding to Nature's colours and forms and seeking the fleeting approximation of the colours and light that he saw. These small rectangles of colour impressions are so abstract it is amazing, even though Sorolla was a passionate Realist.

Study of Waves, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study of Storm-tossed Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study - Storm at Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Study - Storm at Sea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Beach Study, Joaquí Sorolla, oil (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Javea Beach, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Since the sea is endlessly in motion, it is astonishing how Sorolla captures its moods and movement, particularly considering that he did not spend all his time at the coast. His early visits to the brilliantly-lit Mediterranean areas near Javea and Valencia were later contrasted with visits to the north at San Sebastian and Biarritz, with very different atmospheric and marine conditions.

Javea, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Javea, Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Isorllla Sea Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Wave Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla, (Image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Northern Seascape, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

Beach Study, oil, Joaquí Sorolla (image courtesy of Museo Sorolla)

The studies and paintings of the sea are, to me, the most wonderful part of Sorolla's opus.  For him, of course, these studies were  the preparation for the larger finished paintings. He knew that understanding a scene, preparation and prior choice of colours all helped when it came to working on a bigger canvas.  He remarked, "The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible.”

Nonetheless,  Sorolla also knew that once he got going, all bets were off on how the painting would evolve, because the light, scene, sea, would be continually changing.  He advised, “Go to nature with no parti pris. You should not know what your picture is to look like until it is done. Just see the picture that is coming."

For him, as for every artist, especially one working en plein air, every work was a gamble. In his case, however, his gambles paid off handsomely most of the time.

Links with Past Artists

Every time that new findings are published about art found on the walls of caves, it seems that our links with artist ancestors get pushed back further and further in time.  In other words, artists have been among the earliest hominoids to be able to organise abstract thought and find ways to express themselves visually. The remarkable announcement, about three days ago, that an Australian-Indonesian team  has dated the ghostly outlines of human hands on the walls of Maros Cave, on the island of Sulawesi,  to 39,900 years ago, has electrified everyone.  Not only is this one of the oldest examples of a form of art (created by blowing pigment dust onto outstretched hands to create the negative outline), but it is the first proof that Europeans were not the only early artists.  Asia had its share of them too. And most likely, given time and luck, examples of this early rupestrian art will be found in Africa too.

Indonesian cave art

Nonetheless, despite the dating of these hand outlines by sampling minute layers of the minerals covering them and using the radioactive uranium in some of them to fix this date of 39,900 years, there is another earlier artistic site.  In the Panel of Hands in the El Castillo cave in northern Spain, a red dot amongst the hand outlines  has been dated to more than 40,600 years ago.

Panel of Hands, El Castillo Cave, Spain. A hand stencil has been dated to earlier than 37,300 years ago and a red disk to earlier than 40,600 years ago, (Image courtesy of Pedro Saura)

Not so long ago, at the beginning of September this year, there was another fascinating announcement, more controversial, but nonetheless pretty persuasive.  In Gorham's Cave,  Gibraltar, an abstract, almost hash-tag shaped rock engraving has been dated to about 39-40,000 years ago, but has been ascribed to Neanderthal artists.  Just like  their modern descendents,  those far-away artists were capable of creating different types of art, whatever the purpose may have been. Again, this is not the oldest rock engraving - that distinction can be claimed by a 54,000 year old engraved sliver of rock found at the important archeological site, Quneltra, in the Golan Heights, Israel.

Rock Engraving, Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar (image courtesy of Steward Finlayson, Gibraltar Museum)

These early traces of artistic endeavour keep turning up, making for mind-stretching connections if one is an artist.  It is such a fascinating link. Why did those early artists create their images of hand outlines, of amazing animals (like  the strange pig-deer, the babirusa,  from Sulawesi), of deeply incised lines in obdurate rock?  Why, too, did the artist depicting this babirusa exaggerate the animal's different  proportions and, even more rare, place it on a ground surface instead of having it float on the wall as was usually done?

Pig-deer (Babirusa), Maros Cave, Sulawesi (Image courtesy of Maxime Albert, Griffith University, Australia)

If these artists were driven by the need to invoke spirits of their vital food sources, or signals to fellow inhabitants, or claim shelters, or whatever, they still had to get into deep, dark caves and  have enough artificial light  (fires, flares - flickering and fugitive) to see.  They also had to take in with them the pigments and tools to create the art.  They had to have the mental ability to conceive how to translate their ideas into art. That included a wonderful imagination about how to use the different characteristics and configurations of the cave walls and ceilings to the best advantage for their artistic purpose.

In other words, they are no different from every artist today, in the 21st century.  We all have to conceive of what to say in our art, how to do it, how best to get it seen by others, and - if we be so lucky - get it seen by our descendents millennia hence!

A Matter of Timing

I learned long ago, by hard experience, that when working en plein air, you need to be opportunistic and aware of what is happening around you. Somehow luck and timing often are part of the artistic process!

On a windswept hilltop overlooking wide Burgundy plateaux of ploughed fields and neat vineyards, I was deep into drawing a small goldpoint.Ii was trying to be mindful of Matisse's dictum: "one must always search for the desire of the line, where it wishes to enter or where to die away." That wisdom seems so appropriate when drawing in metalpoint, with the ability of the stylus to state its own terms about energetic moments and those when it fades away to a whisper.

I suddenly became aware of the roar of a mighty behemoth of a tractor approaching. I happened to be parked at the edge of a field of barley stubble, as I had become fascinated by the random patterns of the chaff and stubble half lying, half standing after the harvest. The tractor got closer and closer.

I was just trying to decide if I had finished the drawing or not when I glanced up. The monstrous machine was heading straight for my part of the field and the farmer atop his giant tractor was looking hard at me!

I hastily moved right out the way and waved my apologies to him. He nodded, lowered his plough, and before I could count to ten, my barley stubble was no more. Instead, rich russet soil was being churned up in powerful furrows, the first move in the every-renewing cycle of life in the farming world of cereal cultivation.

Barley Stubble, Noyers, goldpoint, J. Cook artist

My timing was impeccable. There were no other fields left of cereal stubble visible anywhere. I had managed to find the last field to be ploughed. In essence, I had more than followed Matisse's idea of finding where the line wishes to enter or die away. The plough was the guiding factor! Or in other words, carpe diem works in art too!