mar 19
I worked on this a wee more; this is like looking at it from farther away. It is a pretty small drawing, about 4.5 x 6,” and is ink on paper.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Drawings, Landscape |
. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
What I love about this landscape and the other ones posted previous, is how the foreground is more in focus and clear– my eye goes directly to the parts of the drawing that are in focus… the minute detail is what I think is the most powerful aspect of your drawings…
(I find my feelings about clarity and detail humorous being that I was once upon a time such a blurry oriented girl. ;0)
March 20th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Catherine:
It’s funny, I keep returning to this drawing. What I realized is both the subject and the execution has an interesting hold on me. Paths, dirt roads through the country-side and forest, trails into the woods: all I have felt to be magical places in the sense of capturing that ineffable anticipation of a journey. There’s nothing like getting out of your car, donning a pack and starting to hike down a path that you know nothing about. What landscapes will it bring you to? What widlife will you see? Every one is different, unique. And those edge habitats are always there at the start.
I mentioned BEWICK before. These types of pathways, over the countryside, along the great British hedgerows, over moor and field, figure prominently in his tale pieces. It was how he learned nature: by walking all over England. His printshop was in Newcastle and he would walk home to Cherryburn at least once a week, well over ten miles one way, throughout the year, the wilder the weather the better. The tramps, hunters, gypsies, fishermen and others he met on these hikes all became fodder for his works.
Mark
March 20th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
That’s great - in this series, I have been acutely concerned with the subject and how it relates to the drawing’s execution. All of the landscapes have a point or points of entry, and I play around with that considerably… or try to. I have been accused at times of being too subtle.
Conceptually, what I am trying to get at is precisely what you mentioned - I am thinking of accessibility into some seriously unreal spaces. Very real places (wildlife refuges) that exist in a very unreal sort of way (highly man-managed). Very romantic views of nature that you cannot quite get to in these drawings; the space is clearly readable but falls apart across the compositions, and from one drawing to another I shift the areas of focus around, and even vary the degree of focus in an entire drawing. So that one drawing might sweep you up into it while another looks on from a more removed vantage, and yet another denies you access altogether.
And finally, my favorite subject: futility. That the act of making thousands of tiny ink lines is analogous to our attempts to preserve undeveloped land…
And Bewick is fantastic.
OK, gentle readers, did any of that make sense?
March 20th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
In my callow mostly mis-spent youth, I was involved for years in research in what was called: psycho-geography, how we perceive our environments and our conceptual sense of places. LONG STORY. But, ever since then, I’ve been extremely interested in our interior landscapes, our imagined geography, where those maps come from and how it affects our emotional response to places.
I actually have long dreams which are almost entirely geographical in content. They all begin or contain hikes along pathways into forests, forests with few distinctive landmarks, often deep conifer woods, but that then eventually open up to broader spaces that contain ruins of human habitation like large stone buildings. Jung would have a field day, so I am thankful I am not a Jungian. But I have had moments when I am actually hiking in real spots that resonate with certain personal symbolic landscapes and that event produces strong emotional reactions to that place.
I have found that all of this informs the history of landscapes in art: why they look certain ways, what they contain, how people appreciated them, the cultural agendas they contain. For instance I am really interested in Chinese and Netherlandish landscapes in particular. Chinese mountain pathways and Netherlandish forests.
Mark
March 21st, 2008 at 12:40 am
I think your thoughts/writings on your landscape drawings & other subjects are so important for the viewer(s) to read to fully grasp what you are all about… it just makes what your drawing all the more interesting… and it’s really important that you aren’t just making a ‘pretty’ landscape… which can easily be thought if your writings didn’t clarify your intent… the subtly issue is a tricky one… there’s such a fine line between the two– Too subtle vs. not subtle enough kind thing.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Re: Chinese landscapes: Far Eastern approaches to representing land and nature (I started my obsession with the Song Dynasty, and then moved from there) are what inspired me to start working with just ink - Alina will remember my studio at Bennington, where I started each morning by grinding ink and practicing Chinese calligraphy. So I am very happy that you brought that up! Also, it is Asia Week here, and I am going to post today on some of what I have seen…
I love your use of “field day,” and though we will leave Jung out of it for now, I too have long complicated journey dreams - though I think I envy yours, as mine are not usually pastoral and are fraught with obstacles and anxiety (yeah, whatever).
March 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Re: Subtlety: It is interesting to have such straightforward representation with a verbalized conceptual component; the complexity and subtlety is what makes it all interesting for me, but it could in fact be a weakness in the work.
In person, as opposed to web reproduction, I believe the conceptual components sit more firmly on the surface (there are such dramatic shifts in scale between the drawings, and the hand is more apparent). But we shall see.
Of course, you (Alina), know all about towing the subtlety line as well…
March 21st, 2008 at 9:22 am
And Mark, HOW DID YOU MISSPEND YOUR YOUTH ON PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY? You don’t really have to answer if it is too long, but I had to comment on that.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I’m pretty certain if I saw your drawings in person I would be responding much differently & most likely not thinking about reading but more on looking… in this blog context your writings are appropriate and I love reading artists writings, like louise bourgeois and others…
March 21st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
What an amazing resource for you… you’re in the heart of Asia Week living where you live!!!! Please take photos if you can?