Why Am I Doing This?

Why Am I Doing This?

I have decided to write a blog about art and travel. Things that I like to think about, and talk about, tend to fall under these categories, so it seems to make sense.

Why am I doing this? One reason has to do with something that contemporary artist Vincent Desiderio has said about art making in general, that it is a process of self-enlightenment for the artist. Bo Bartlett, another major contemporary artist, with whom I had the good fortune to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, spoke of an idea that I think is similar: making art is a way to wake up.

But art serves the viewer, as well as the artist. I hope that this blog, like my artwork, may be interesting and useful to other people.

I am working to link this to my Facebook account, which will, I hope, help more people see it. This calm little interface on Blogger that I am now using is more to my taste than is the dense web of information that a Facebook page has to offer. So if I can start my content here I would like to.

As an artist, I need to share my work. Many artists now use Instagram, but I don’t have a smartphone, nor is my computer a touch-screen device, so I am looking for other ways to do that. And, as I mentioned, I like to think, and talk, about things that very often end up being art- or travel- related. And, as a third potential benefit, perhaps this could be a good way to keep in touch with people without being on Facebook.

My plan is to post an image every Friday, and talk a little bit about it, or something else. Beyond that, I would like to see how it develops.

This is a sketchbook drawing that I did when I was in Copenhagen, in June 2016. It is a little, not-too-accurate sketch that I did at the Hirschsprung Collection, from a painting by the great Danish artist P. S. Krøyer titled At the Victualler's When There is No Fishing. My sketch is from a small detail of the whole painting, which shows a group of people in an interior, a grocery store. See it here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peder_Severin_Kr%C3%B8yer_-_A_the_victualler%27s_when_there_is_no_fishing_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

I was just revisiting a reproduction of the painting and was reminded of how gripping an experience it was seeing the painting in person. It grabs me by the shoulders and places me firmly in another place and time. I am there, a fully conscious being. This is communicated solely through the placement of paint on a flat surface, by a great artist, P. S. Krøyer. I am in another specific context, experiencing a particular set of circumstances, but I am also experiencing, in a notably full way, the universal human spiritual experience: What does it all mean?! This painting is alive.

For me, no photograph has ever provided such a full sense of transport. Recording information based in the fall of light may be a guiding principle in the making of a painting, as it is so clearly in the making of a photograph. But the way a painter makes it all up, a whole image, out of pieces of the physical substance of paint, adds a visceral connection that can be, uniquely, both grounding and electrifying.

I loved the light on the little boy’s head, so I started drawing with that. But there is so much more there, in the painting. I made the boy look like an old man in my sketch. Perhaps the fatigue of studying paintings in a museum was taking its toll. It is not the most accurate study I have ever done. 

At the time I was writing verbal notes, as much as drawing, so that’s all the drawing I did at the Hirschsprung. There are a few more sketches from the nearby State Art Museum in Copenhagen, and from other places, that I hope to share in upcoming blog posts.