I can't leave Montreal, at least until the end of the month, because a new lockdown was imposed on October 1, so there is no question of driving out into the country to see the fall foliage, visiting a natural area, or going apple picking, let alone visiting Vermont or the Adirondacks. I'm fortunate to be able to see trees and fall color from my window, and to have begonias, geraniums, nasturtiums and sweet peas blooming on our terrace, but I still have a persistent sense of being trapped -- as so many of us do.
It helps to turn to images of places I love. A couple of weeks ago I re-explored a garden we visited at the Ex Convento del Carmen (former Carmelite convent) in the Mexico City suburb of San Angel, and made a few drawings and watercolor sketches. The first drawing is below, and that's a watercolor of the same basic view at the top of this page.
From a different position, 90 degrees to the left, this is a massive stone seat with the convent walls behind:
One afternoon at the studio, I was looking through last year's Instagram posts and came across a watercolor of Delphi that I'd forgotten, and it struck me as much better than I remembered. I searched and searched through my sketchbooks until I finally found it in a drawer in the flat file -- I hadn't remembered that it was painted on a scrap of extra-heavyweight Arches watercolor paper -- my favorite surface to use -- and that's perhaps why it came out well. I'm always surprised how certain materials seem to inspire a better effort, while using others that may be just as good but somehow don't feel quite right to me personally always seems to end up with a lesser result. Originally I had cropped it much tighter; I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, I cut a matte, put a frame on it and brought it home so I can remember that extraordinary day, everyday.
Yesterday I started on another subject, a hillside in Greece with blue agaves and cacti, and if it ever stops raining, I'll walk back up to the studio and finish that one, or work on the same idea in another medium.
As you can probably see, these watercolors are getting looser, less realistic, and more expressive -- but often I still do a fairly realistic black-and-white drawing first to work out the shapes and compositional relationships -- plus, I just like to draw. There are few activities that feel more absorbing, and even though I've done it all my life, it always feels like magic to start with a blank sheet of paper and end up with a representation of something observed and a record of that particular time and place and state of mind.
Drawing, more than any other art activity, also connects me to all the artists who've filled sketchbooks and made drawings. I feel my eyes travel from the object to the paper and back again, without much conscious thinking, as my hand somehow -- I don't pretend to understand it -- translates that seeing into lines and forms. Even when the drawing doesn't come out particularly well, it still seems like a little quiet miracle that human beings try to do this, and have always done it: "I sat here, I was still, I looked, I used my hands and eyes and made this." Maybe there's some hope for us after all.
Thank you. Yes. There is hope. So many quiet miracles in this post.
Posted by: am | October 07, 2020 at 08:58 PM
Thank you, am. I'm glad you agree there's hope, and that you appreciated this post.
Posted by: Beth | October 07, 2020 at 10:49 PM
That you can orient your paintings toward looseness and light says a great deal about your hard-won equanimity. In a time of contraction, you have found an area to loosen. Hoping to take your example into my life, especially this weekend.
Posted by: Duchesse | October 08, 2020 at 07:27 AM
I love seeing your art, Beth. Thank you for these windows into other places.
Posted by: Rachel Barenblat | October 12, 2020 at 08:21 AM