the cassandra pages

The Blank Page - and some November fields

 

The only way to get over the fear of the blank page is to encounter lots of them. The first page of a new sketchbook is always the hardest, but the subsequent ones get easier. I’ve started on a project of painting twenty 11 1/2” x 15” watercolor sheets. That’s five large sheets of Arches cold press, cut into quarters. I’m hoping that by the time I’ve worked through all of them, I’ll have learned some new things, and possibly had a breakthrough.

Above is a sheet that’s been soaked with water and then taped to my desk with masking tape. I run a sponge around the edges first to dry them a bit, and then apply the tape, pressing it down again and again over the succeeding minutes until it adheres well. This is to minimize the buckling of the wet paper as it dries, and the stretching also allows for the addition of wet washes or re-dampening the sheet during the painting process.

 

The swatches at left are the palette I’ve chosen for this piece. Just six pigments: ultramarine blue, quinacridone burnt orange, yellow ochre, hansa yellow, sap green, buff titanium. The blue and orange mix together to form many colors, from dark blue to a range of browns and greys, perfect for the November fields and woods that are the subject of this picture.

While the paper is still wet, the first washes need to go down - but if it’s too wet, they’ll run into each other. Sometimes you want that, sometimes not. I painted the ochre fields and a background for the woods first.

 

The sky had an initial blue wash, leaving the clouds white, and then as the paper dried I further defined the sky/cloud edges and added some grey shadows in the lower parts of the clouds.

 

The middle of the paper is still damp here, allowing me to create softness in the hedgerow and the shadows on the field. The woods were drier when I put the dark trees in, and I went back with a sea sponge to blot out the bits of field showing through them and soften the tops of the trees.

The foreground trees couldn’t be painted until the field area was drier. I’m still learning how to judge what will happen when I put my brush onto the paper, and the exact moment when I should do that. The result depends not only on how damp the paper is, but also how wet or thick the pigment is that I’ve loaded onto the brush, and whether that particular pigment is opaque or transparent.

 

The calibration between all these variables is very tricky, and only experience with specific materials, as well as years of practice, add up to judgement. On the other hand, it’s often speed and unexpected events that give watercolor its spontaneity and vibrancy, so being too careful is a detriment. That’s the Zen quality I want to aim for in this most difficult medium — having such a mastery of the technical aspects that I don’t have to think about them, and can let go. I’m not there yet, but hopeful that this project will result in progress.

 

I had a hard time photographing the final painting — the image above is too contrast-y, and the colors are washed out, but when I adjusted those parameters during editing, I couldn’t achieve a good balance. This detail shows the subtlety a little better:

 

In the end, there are things I like here, and things I don’t — the painting does get across the colors and mood of the rural northeast in these last days of November, but it’s too detailed. No fussing or second thoughts, though: I’m just going to move on to the next blank sheet and make another painting. This is only number 3!

It’s easy to imagine a flock of wild turkeys on these fields. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

Simplicity, in life and in death

 

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

 

On Monday, we drove down to Binghamton, New York, to attend a family funeral the following morning. My Aunt Doris was the wife of my father’s eldest brother, the Rev. F. Porter Adams. Porter died suddenly in his early 60s, forty years ago, and yet Doris continued in good health, living independently until she was 94, and dying last week at 98. Like his father, my paternal grandfather, Porter was a Methodist minister, and so is his daughter Nancy. He and Doris were married in 1952. I remember her as a devoted mother to her children and the embodiment of the perfect minister’s wife, always at her husband’s side and involved with their church communities. After he died she was an equally caring mother and helper for her adult children and grand daughters. She was a homemaker, a good baker, cook, and seamstress, with a strong Christian faith; she was always kind to me, and I never remember her being annoyed, complaining, or saying a cross word to anyone. I realized, sitting at the service, that -- outside of these roles, which were also the subject of the sermon and the family reminiscences — I had barely known her at all.

Or then again, perhaps I had. Perhaps the way she was remembered and described at the funeral was exactly who she was, and that her choice had been just that: to live a simple, modest, selfless life, expressing her faith through devotedly caring for her family and community. It must have been terrible to lose her husband so suddenly and unexpectedly, just when he was looking forward to retirement, but somehow she managed not only to go on, but to find meaning and purpose in the many decades that remained. Not only had she been loving and faithful, she must have also been quite strong, and have had the support of good friends in addition to her children and her siblings.

The funeral was simple, straightforward, and heartfelt. Old favorite Methodist hymns played on a piano, stories shared by her family and the chaplain at the nursing home where she had lived for the past four years, a brief eulogy by the pastor of the church, a duet sung by those two women - the chaplain and pastor - followed by prayers of commendation. I was glad there was a lot of music, because it’s a tradition on my father’s side of the family. When they were young, my dad, his sister, and his two brothers had often sung as a quartet at church services led by their own father, and later on my grandmother always insisted that we all stand around the piano and sing together at family gatherings. I grew up playing those Methodist hymns at the piano while my father sang, in his clear tenor voice, and I could hear him next to me, in my mind, on Tuesday morning.

In addition to being there for my cousins, who have always supported me at such events, I’d wanted to acknowledge the passing of my aunt as the last of my parents’ generation. The eldest on both sides of my family is now...me. It’s a sobering thought, and it has come late, mainly because many of them lived very long lives.

 

Landscape on I-88 near Nineveh, NY. Pencil drawing in sketchbook.

The drive back to Montreal was long -- more than six hours, not counting stops — but the weather was good and we took turns driving. The first stretch, on I-88 from Binghamton to Oneonta and then to Albany, passes through what feels like home terrain to me, and near towns where my grandparents and father, and later, friends of my own once lived: Nimmonsburg, Afton, Bainbridge, Sydney Center, Nineveh, Otego.

Jonathan drove the first stretch, and I looked out the window, taking photos of the landscape I love and making these two fast pencil sketches, while I thought about my aunt’s life, so different from my own. I also replayed the service we’d attended, fixing it in my memory. Such simplicity! It couldn’t have been a greater contrast to the grand liturgical events at the Anglican Cathedral we attend and where, as a choir member, I was part of the presentation for so many years. I had loved this very Protestant service, though, and felt comfortable in it — partly because it reminded me of where I came from, and mainly because it was utterly sincere. Anglican liturgy gives structure, dignity, solemnity, and a progression of mood and intention throughout a service; the language is poetic, and music provides meditation, participatory moments, and enhances the mood of the readings, the time of year, the occasion. The words and service used at a royal funeral are almost the same as those for the funeral of any Anglican, anywhere in the world. But there is a lot to be said for the directness, familiarity, sincerity, and simplicity of what we had just witnessed. It suited my aunt perfectly, and perhaps some of that feeling came across in the simple drawings I did later that day.

 

Near Unadilla, NY. Watercolor, 5.5” x 8” in sketchbook.

Today, though, I’m back in my own home. That peaceful landscape of fields and gently rolling hills continues to call to me, so I did a quick watercolor in my sketchbook, hopefully bringing the muted colors of November to life for you. There will be more to come.

Maintaining One's Practice...notes on self-preservation

Like many of us, I am very anxious about the election. Even though I live in Canada, I’m a dual citizen, the U.S. is my country of birth and where I lived for the first fifty years of my life, and it’s where members of my family have lived, worked, and tried to contribute to society for three centuries. We voted several weeks ago by absentee ballot. I care — a lot — about what happens today, and not just for the sake of America itself.

I also realize that our lives are going to continue, no matter what the outcome is. We’re going to get up on Wednesday, and Thursday, and next week, and next month, and we’re going to have to keep going and continue trying to be our best selves. Worrying and obsessing aren’t going to help. Am I sleeping well? Not particularly. But I’m trying to exert some control over what I actually can control: my attitude, and how I fill my time. Maybe what I’m going to share here will provide a break for you from all the news today, and remind you that there’s always more breadth and depth — and color! — in each of our lives, waiting to be discovered.

Yesterday, frustrated with my fragmented focus of late, I decided to act on a goal that I’ve mentioned here — to make a concerted effort to improve my watercolor paintings. The two main problems I’ve identified are the paper in my sketchbook, and the size I’ve been working in. Both limit my ability to use a full range of watercolor techniques, and to use larger brushes and a more expressive style. Years ago, before I began keeping a sketchbook as a sort of visual diary, my watercolors were quite different. I want to get back to that, and to improve from there.

The first thing I did was to cut up some sheets of beautiful, high-quality Arches cold-press paper from my paper stock. Then I did an inventory of my paints to see what I really wanted to have in my palette and what I might want to add or switch out. There’s not much change, actually, except that I want to substitute modern equivalents for the cadmiums eventually, since they’re toxic. So is cobalt blue, but I can’t do without it, so I exercise caution. Then I used the first of the watercolor sheets to paint some test swatches.

 

After that, I took a hard look at the watercolor palette I’ve been using, shown at right. It’s a small, hinged-top box, 6”x 4.5”, with 24 removeable wells. It’s perfect for travel and for use with my sketchbook, but both the wells and mixing areas are quite small, which means I end up being miserly with paint. It’s just not possible to mix up a big juicy quantity of color on such a palette, and that’s a requirement for large work.

I took out my own large studio palette, as well, but decided it was old, dry, and had far too many wells. Then I remembered the big, 16” x 11” palette that I’d bought years ago for my mother and brought here when we sold the house this summer. Yes! Perfect! I cleaned it, and set it up for myself afresh. This palette also has 24 storage wells for the colors, but they hold much more, the top seals to keep the paints moist, and the mixing areas are really generous. Here it is, with a “map” of the pigments below.

 

 

Once I had done that, I felt inspired and ready to work. Isn’t it odd how sometimes all we need to do, to clear the necessary space in our heads for a new start, is to clean and organize our physical space?

I soaked a piece of that fine paper in water, sponged it lightly, taped it to my work table, and began a painting of a view from our walk at the Morgan Arboretum a week ago. I had studied the reference photos and made some planning decisions about the colors, the shadows and light, and various technical issues I knew I’d be facing — in particular, how to show small bits of light on the leaves and twigs, falling through trees and foliage which were in deep shade - preserving or creating small light areas is a perpetual problem in watercolor. Several hours later, I had this painting in front of me:

 

At 7” x 10.5”, this is still too small, but it was large enough to reinforce my instinct about using good paper. The strong, medium-toothed, Arches paper responded wonderfully, giving vibrant clear color and depth in the shadows, standing up to soaking and wet washes, and holding as much detail as necessary. It allowed for pigment removal, re-soaking and re-working, dry brush scumbling, and scratching with knives and other tools.

It was a good experiment, and a good starting place for new explorations. Best of all, I hadn’t thought about anything else while I was working on it.

 

Singers need to sing, dancers need to dance, poets and writers need to write, artists need to paint and draw — and we need to do this on a regular basis, with focus and concentration. It’s so easy to let life intervene, and of course, sometimes it has to. But when we’re able to maintain a practice, day after day, week after week, then we can make progress, even if it’s in very small increments.

Our practice is a big part of what sustains us, through the good times in life and the difficult ones. And our practice is what helps us sustain others, whether through our creative work or just by being better balanced and more fulfilled human beings. Sometimes we need to jump-start our practice, and sometimes we need to do a housecleaning, or to take stock and rethink what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. That comes with this territory.

But we can’t let ourselves be de-railed by negativity or the endless opportunities for distraction, even as our hearts are filled with strong emotions from outrage to anxiety to compassion and grief. Today, I’ll work on some more art, and I’ll also play my flute for half an hour, and do some cooking. Over the weekend, I made bread for the first time in a long while. Winter’s coming. We need sustenance in all its forms.

Making a Print

Take a three-minute break from your day, and make a print with me...

I had thought of doing a voiceover for this short video, but then decided it would be more meditative without an audio explanation - and with all that's going on in our fraught world, we need moments when we can step back.

-----

Since moving to our new home two years ago and closing our studio, I haven't done any printmaking. I've missed it. Needing to make some new prints for blog subscribers was the incentive I needed to get out the printing materials and figure out how to set up in this new space. Once I had things organized and had made some test prints, I thought of making a video of the process for the blog.

The first step is rolling out the ink on a glass or plexiglass sheet, using a rubber roller known as a brayer. In rolling, you're changing the consistency and tackiness of the ink. You can't print with it as it comes out of the tube - the ink would just slide around, and it wouldn't hold any fine detail. The rolling process changes that as the ink film becomes thinner and thinner on the glass. It's difficult to describe how to know when it's ready; I sense it both by what I see in the pattern of the rolled ink as it leaves the brayer, and by the sound the brayer makes when the ink reaches the proper consistency. (In the video, the ink has alteady been rolled out for several minutes; all I'm doing is coating the brayer.)

Then we're ready to ink the carved relief block. In this case, it's a linocut - this one was an illustration for Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy that I illustrated and published through Phoenicia Publishing back in 2016. You have to keep the brayer absolutely flat, and make sure every little bit of carved surface has a thin coat of ink, but that you haven't smudged any onto the background, which is easy to do. A few little marks will always come through when hand-printing, and that's part of the beauty of the process. However, we don't want smudges, unclear lines and corners, or inconsistent coverage in the solid areas.

Enlarged view of the relief block from a low angle -- the difference between the carved and uncarved surfaces is less than 1/16 of an inch.

Each relief block is different, and each has its own challenges - areas that don't want to print cleanly, tight details that tend to fill up, or large dark areas that don't print solidly unless careful attention is paid. We only learn each block's idiosyncracies by making test prints, seeing what happens, and adjusting.

A thin sheet of Japanese paper -- here I'm using a handmade sheet, made from a plant fiber called kozu -- is placed carefully on the block. I've marked pencil lines on the masking tape around the block to help me position the paper where I want it to be. Then I use my fingers to lightly stick the paper to the block. The transfer of ink begins with the use of a baren - mine is an inexpensive Japanese baren, made from a plastic disk covered with bamboo. Because it's flat, it glides evenly along the surface of the block, transferring ink to the paper.

Some people only use a baren, but I've never felt it did the job completely. So I use it to do an initial pass, and then finish the print using a wooden spoon. I've used this particular spoon for probably thirty years! It gives me the ability to change the angle and pressure, depending on what sort of area I'm working on. For a sharp, detailed section like the eye, or the ridges on the back of the frog, I use the front of the spoon and a smaller, more pointed stroke, while for a large flat solid area, I use the bowl of the spoon and a more circular stroke to get consistent coverage of ink onto the paper.

Once the print is finished, it will be barely stuck to the block, and you should be able to remove it easily. If the ink was too thick or not tacky enough, it can slide on the block and create a smudged image. If it's too thick or too runny, the details will be lost. If the ink dries too fast, as water-based inks tend to do, they may not soak into the paper well enough at all. But some oil-based inks don't dry fast enough, and you'll find an oily halo on the edges of each inked line. Each type of paper also affects the printing process, because it takes the ink differently. There are a lot of variables, and only experience can help us learn how to manage them. I now use Caligo Safe Wash inks, which are oil-based, but clean up with water.

Then the prints go on a closeline or a rack to dry - they're ready to handle in about 36-48 hours. Once I've taken them off the line, I inspect them carefully - out of this batch of 8 prints, I rejected two, as well as the initial two test prints. The accepted prints are then numbered and signed.

Although I work in many media, I sometimes think printmaking is the most satisfying. There's something both elemental and almost magical about rubbing the back of the paper and seeing the image emerge - human beings have been doing similar things ever since the first artist painted their own hand and pressed it against the wall of a cave. I also love the ability to make copies of a work of art that are neither photographic nor digital, and not mechanical in any way; each one is its own small, slightly unique entity, on a carefully-made piece of paper that feels natural and of the earth.

 

Announcing my new book, "Snowy Fields"

I'm happy to announce the forthcoming (mid/late Nov 2023) publication of my book of drawings and written reflections, SNOWY FIELDS, done during the past year. It's a slightly oversized 9" x 10" paperback art book, printed on coated paper. It contains the entire series of drawings, a long reflective essay that I wrote about place, identity, grief, and my artistic process, and an essay about my work by the British artist, writer, composer and educator Michael Szpakowski. The book can be pre-ordered now at a reduced price, and you can find all the details about it on the Phoenicia Publishing website.

It's always exciting when a project that began in uncertainty gradually comes together, takes shape, and is finally refined into a finished form. The moment when it is launched, to find its own way into the world, is also my chance to thank YOU, my online readers, who encouraged me and offered feedback as this series of drawings took shape. I also thank all those who corresponded with me about the artwork, and supported me through a time of change, grief, and discovery. You helped me personally, and you helped this project come into being. I'm grateful.

At the Musée des Beaux-Arts

Our weather has been really grim this week, adding to the feeling of cooped-up restlessness that is always part of this long run-up to real spring in the north. Yesterday afternoon I couldn't stand it any longer, and went out into the cold rain and wind to take the metro downtown, and then walk up to the Musée des Beaux-Arts, my sketchbook and drawing supplies in my bag.

We became members of the museum again a few months ago, for the first time since the pandemic began, but we've only visited once since. Yesterday, I was hoping to see some drawings, but there didn't seem to be much of any on display - I think I'll contact the curators and ask if it's possible to see anything from the collection. So instead I took a close look at the permanent collection of European art. There is a room of impressionists that’s not bad: an early Cezanne landscape, several Pissarros and Sisleys, a couple of large landscapes by Armand Guillaumin that I liked quite a lot. The 20^th century contemporary art collection is very thin and not to my taste. There's a large canvas by Elaine deKooning, and an oil sketch of five figures by Barbara Hepworth that I liked a lot; one painting by Matisse. Above, there's an entire floor of French Baroque/Rococo-- I can't stand that period so I skipped it -- and on the next level, some excellent Dutch paintings, among them two landscapes by Jacob von Ruisdael, a number of still lives, works by Breugel the Younger, and a beautiful Rembrandt portrait.

Detail from Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1530, oil on wood.

On the top, when I entered the Renaissance galleries, I finally felt my whole body relax. There is no single spectacular piece, but in the darkened rooms, with some stained glass and some good sculptures, and the brilliant carmines and blues and greens in the paintings, I was quickly held in the quiet ambience of the age. I had never been to these galleries before, or maybe they have changed. After looking around carefully, and spending time with a Memling portrait of a young man, and a Holbein portrait of Erasmus in a fur-trimmed robe, holding a book, I did a couple of drawings of early sculptures that particularly spoke to me.

 

If I hadn’t been tired of standing when I finished, I would have also drawn a German wood carving, titled, “Virgin of the Annunciation”, that I found beautiful in her attitude of reflection as she looks away from her book at something that has entered her room. I will go back and do that.

On the other side of the street, connected by an underground passageway, a different building houses the Canadian collection, as well as galleries with antiquities and art from other parts of the world. I'm more familiar with those and will go there to draw sometime soon. 

In two of the rooms, wooden sketching benches had been positioned near large sculptures, with sheets of newsprint clipped to an easel attached to the seat. But there were too many visitors in those rooms for me to feel comfortable using one of those benches -- you'd feel like a live part of the display. Off to the side in the dark Renaissance rooms, no one bothered me. If they looked over my shoulder I didn't notice, and they quickly moved on.

Drawing in museums isn't something I've done very much - I really started doing that in Athens, more than three years ago, and haven't been in similar spaces much at all since then. When traveling, I always feel like time is at a premium and the priority in a museum is to see more of what is being shown. In one's home town, that's obviously not the case! I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before now; it was good for me.

Not Springing Along, but Inching...

Spring is coming very fitfully to Montreal this year. One day, warm weather; the next, cold clammy rain. It's pretty awful today. But forsythia is blooming, and the first daffodils, and the magnolias have huge buds. It will arrive.

And normalcy in our personal life also seems closer this year than for the past three. This weekend we had dinner at a friend's house and met some new people - what a pleasure! Saturday night we drove out to Pierrefonds, a western suburb that is still on the island of Montreal, to see Albertine en cinq temps, an opera adapted from Michel Trembley's 1984 play of the same name, with music by Catherine Major, and is a production conceived, created, and carried out entirely by women. It tells the story of a Montreal woman, Albertine, who has had a difficult life, and at age 70 is spending her first night in a nursing home. She talks with her earlier selves -- Albertine at 30, 40, 50, and 60 - as well as her sister, Madeline - and the story of her life is revealed through their conversations. Albertine's history mirrors the history of many Quebec women who were unable to find much freedom in their lives, and were deeply affected by patriarchal and religious attitudes. Interestingly, too, the story of her life takes place on rue Fabre and in Parc Lafontaine, the exact part of the city  where we used to live ourselves.

Albertine en cinq temps is also the first opera ever produced in Quebec to be written and performed in Joual. This is a Quebec dialect of French that was spoken mainly by the working class and is now a source of Quebec identity; many of its words have entered the main language as Quebec slang, but for those of us who didn't grow up hearing or speaking it, it can be really hard to understand. One of my close friends, Catherine St-Arnaud, who I sang with in the cathedral choir, sings the role of Albertine at 30 and has been part of the production team bringing this opera to life. She sent us a bilingual libretto to read beforehand, in French and English, and there were projected sur-titles, but because the French was all in dialect, it was a little tricky, as well as being fascinating to a word nerd like me. All in all, Albertine is a brilliant and very moving opera, beautifully conceived and sung, and if you ever have a chance to see it, by all means do so - there are several more performances of this current Quebec tour. This was also the first big public performance we've attended in three years, so it felt like a liberation for us.

I haven't been painting or drawing much this week, except for the watercolor here -- the bowl of fruit on the blue-and-yellow platter just begged to be painted, especially the brilliance of the pomegranates. This was somewhat bigger than usual - I did it in my 14" x 11" sketchbook and used large brushes.

Instead I'm working on a text to go with the charcoal landscape drawing series, which I hope to publish later in 2023. Because it's personal, as well as being about the art, it's been rather slow going, but it's coming along -- like the slow progress of spring.

Can We Reprogram our Brains?

Yesterday I read an article in The New York Times titled "What Killed Penmanship?" The teaching of cursive handwriting has fallen out of favor in schools, and been dropped from many state curricula. The reasons cited are obvious: we are living in the digital age; we spend so much time on our smartphones, tablets, and computers, that hardly anyone needs to be able to write by hand anymore, and certainly not "beautifully". Today, the most handwriting that many people do is to scrawl a note to themselves, or write a grocery list (though even I use my phone for that!) - so it's hard to justify forcing kids to learn to write well by hand, practicing all those loops and consistent slants. However, the article went on to talk about a site on Reddit called "Penmanship Porn" where people post and look at examples of beautiful handwriting, and also about remedial courses some people are taking, as adults, to try to improve their penmanship, or even learn how to write in a way that might make a splash on that Reddit site.

This is all quite interesting to me, as a former calligrapher, and granddaughter of a teacher of the Palmer Method who instilled that exemplar of cursive into me at a young age. I still have some of the Palmer Method pens she used - the kind with a nib you inserted and then dipped into an inkwell. Imagine that. My own handwriting, however, has deteriorated a lot over the past thirty years: proportionately, no doubt, with the marked improvement in my typing.

I'm not as concerned about whether or not kids learn cursive handwriting in schools from a motor-skills viewpoint -- after all, no one can argue that there's not major dexterity involved in typing on a phone with both thumbs at high speed, and most young people seem amazingly good at that. The brain's ability to form ideas and thoughts and transform them into words is probably not hugely different when the end result is written with a pen than when it's typed - although, let's admit it -- there's a big difference between texting and writing a long, thoughtful letter to a friend. 

But because the development of writing, as symbols made by hand, was such a critical part of human development itself, I do suspect that some sort of evolutionary neural pathway is no longer being used when we do not use our hands in this way. Maybe another question to ask is, "What Else Died when We Killed Off Penmanship?" I'm being somewhat facetious: plenty of people, like my left-handed husband, never learned cursive handwriting, and that fact didn't interfere with either his dexterity or creativity. It's not cursive that's at issue: it's what happens when we write words and thoughts down by hand. It's a slower process, related to drawing, that requires us to think carefully -- there's no delete button -- and use fine-motor coordination, as our brains navigate a complex communication pathway between mind, eye, and hand -- and from there to the intended recipient of whatever we wanted to record or communicate.

What specialized and complex tasks DO we actually use that mind-eye-hand pathway for, anymore? We brush our teeth and dress ourselves, we might prepare some food; some of us play sports; we certainly type. But fewer and fewer people play instruments, learn to draw, learn to write beautifully, know how to do needlework or woodworking, make a really good meal from scratch without taking all night, throw a clay pot, know how to fix their own cars or a leaking faucet -- the list goes on. Cars are a good example -- even if someone might want to learn how to service their own car, most vehicles have become so complex, with computer-controlled systems, that it's not even possible. In this sort of world, where the knowledge, desire, and need to do such things are disappearing, I wonder if the human being isn't becoming something quite different from what we were in all the preceding centuries. How are our brains changing in the process?

When I searched for information on this topic, it's predictably voluminous, but also rather vague. Scientists acknowledge that technology has contributed to weaker memories, attention spans, and information-processing ability. On the other hand, so many tasks that we once had to do in our heads, slowly and carefully, have become rapid and automatic -- and who doesn't prefer that? Going back to the old ways has become inconceivable.

But in terms of the loss of specific practices like handwriting or drawing, there is less written. What science does know is that our brains adapt and change in response to external stimuli but also what we tell them to do: we actually have some control over this. Repeated behavior reinforces certain neural pathways, and causes disused ones to atrophy -- though in many cases this can be reversed. Being repeatedly exposed to disturbing media that upsets us, for instance, can cause our brains to form pathways that automatically end up stimulating negative thoughts, worry, and stress.  When we are under stress, certain hormones are also released that affect our bodies. One of the best ways to interrupt this destructive process is to reprogram our brains through making time for creative activities that help us to focus and concentrate in different ways.  When we draw, write by hand, doodle, play an instrument, knit or sew, whittle a piece of wood, make a paper collage or scrapbook -- as when we meditate, or do yoga -- we are giving our brains a break and stimulating them to strengthen positive pathways, relax our bodies, and decrease stress. But those activities need to become a regular practice in order to have a real effect.

While these kinds of activities have declined since their last resurgence in the 60s and early 70s, it does seem to me that there is a counter-reaction now, and that more and more people want to step away for a while, slow down, and learn to do something contemplative -- and perhaps also useful or beautiful -- with their hands and bodies, perhaps driven to it by wanting something, anything, that will help with the anxiety of living in our chaotic world and the constant barrage of upsetting news. Last week I went to an evening meeting of a new knitting club at the local library -- and it was eye-opening. More about that in a subsequent post!

Inspiration and Perspiration

I can feel that I'm starting to be ready to wrap up this series of winter drawings, at least for this year. There are two or three others I'd like to do if I can. But this one beckoned persistently, and because I knew it would be a real challenge, I decided I'd better go for it while I still felt inspired.

On the day I saw this scene, we had been fortunate enough to drive through the Adirondacks just after a heavy snowstorm that had thickly coated every single branch of every tree -- the atmospheric conditions must have been very particular. Since the snowfall, there had been no wind, and we were nearly alone on the roads, so it felt like a sort of suspended animation. We left the main road at some point and drove up through deep woods on a narrow dirt road to its top, and then back down into a hollow where there was a stream. The road was icy, and we figured we'd better turn around while we could. Jonathan got out to take a picture of the water, but on the other side of the road, long ago, someone had made a semi-circular clearing, now ringed by this group of trees, completely covered with thick fresh snow: mostly spruces and larches with lacy branches, standing heroically like characters in a play, or guardians of the woods behind them, flanked by a chorus of bare deciduous trees raising their white arms and fingers. No wind blew, no birds sang or hopped from branch to branch to cause cascades of snow -- just the utter stillness of deep midwinter woods on an extraordinary day.

At the time I hadn't planned to do any drawings, but as this series progressed, I kept coming back to that semi-circle of trees, and felt I needed to try.

The complex nature of this forest scene required a preliminary sketch (above). The overall approach was too simplistic and too contrast-y, but I was just trying out different approaches. I wasn't too happy with the spruce tree, but liked the larch on the right, and felt that the handling of the trees in the background would probably work. So then it was a question of beginning again for real, and summoning the patience for what I knew would be a long, challenging effort.

In most of the drawings in the series, I've been able to work back and forth across the whole scene, or from top to bottom in a logical way. But here, I couldn't do that, because there was so much going on that I kept losing track of where I was. So I developed the picture in vertical slices, worrying all the time that I wouldn't be able to integrate the entire drawing across the picture plane. It was complicated, eye-fatiguing, and seemed like it took forever -- I worked on it off and on for three days.

Then, once I was almost done, I had to work quite a bit on the picture as a whole to make the different areas relate to each other, and bring the overall greyscale into harmony. There are some things I'd do differently if I were to do it over (that's not going to happen!) but in general I'm pretty happy with the final result.

--

This process made me think a lot about what happens when inspiration is hard to hold onto -- how do we keep going toward our original goal when things get tough? It's so easy, and tempting, to give up at that point. Part of being a professional artist, designer, writer -- or pretty much any other artform -- is learning how to stick with a project, no matter how difficult it is or how many obstacles come up, and bring about a satisfactory conclusion. If the client has hired you, then that is your part of the contract. Likewise, if the public has bought a ticket to the concert, there is an expectation of excellence.

But for the professional, this also creates a difficulty. When is the result "good enough," and when is it extraordinary? Because most of us know, deep down, that there is a difference. In music, as in all the arts -- and in sports, for that matter -- peak performances do not happen every day. The public may not know, because technical virtuosity may be there, just as facility in drawing or painting may be there, and the public tends to recognize and reward virtuosity. But technical brilliance alone doesn't create an inspired performance or a truly special work of art; it is not the same as artistry that somehow, intangibly, conveys what is going on in the heart and mind of the artist and conveys that to the audience in a truly moving and memorable way. For that matter, the artist often doesn't know why a particular performance felt different, or why a particular painting or drawing or poem happened as it did: you can't "will" it to happen. The hours and hours of practice and preparation that add up to technical facility are the means to the end, but they are not the end in themselves.

There are an awful lot of professionals who do coast along on a combination of technique, repetition of what has been praised or popular, and doing work that is "good enough." Pushing yourself to do better, to continually grow, requires taking risks -- and that means some of the time you're going to fall short or fail. It also means once in a while, maybe not often at all, you're going to do something that confirms why you began this journey in the first place.

I'm not saying that this drawing is extraordinary in any way, just that it was more challenging than the others I've done so far, and required digging deeper into myself to keep going and pull out a result that felt satisfying -- it asked more of me. Looking back on the last two months of work, I can see that I've learned a lot.

I always pay attention when I feel my inspiration running thin. Perspiration - pushing through to a good result - can only take you so far. The poet Osip Mandelstam once made the enigmatic comment that he always knew when he was getting close to the end of a cycle of poems when he started writing about the stars. He had discovered a clue in his own work. I don't have that; I just have a feeling that I'm not quite there on the razor's edge, the way it was when inspiration first hit and the first works were coming. But concentration and persistence can bring you back to a place where inspiration once again takes over: that's the intangible lesson of this drawing, and maybe of those moments standing in the circle of snow-covered trees.

Old Apple Trees

 

The latest in my series of winter charcoal drawings of upstate and central New York is this one, of a pair of old trees in a field - probably apple trees, I'm thinking. They touch something in me; perhaps it's the way they are still growing in spite of losing limbs and, in the case of one, practically its entire original trunk. Maybe it's because they look like a pair. But it's also because finding old trees like this feels typical of such a place, where people have been farming for a long time. Perhaps there was once a homestead nearby. I like the way these trees, with their individual personalities, stand in the foreground, set off by the indistinct woods in the little gully behind the hills; it makes me want to walk there, climb up the hill behind, see if there's a stream. I'm sure deer like these trees too, and can be found beneath them in the fall, eating apples.

It's difficult to get good photos or scans of these drawings; even when I work on them in Photoshop, I find that favoring the bright white of the snow means losing a lot of detail and grey tones in the trees, but retaining those tones means the snow is too dark. I've got a project in mind for this series, so I need to solve that technical problem, no doubt with some help from my partner who knows all about black-and-white reproduction.

But in real life, I can see that progress has been made. I pinned all the drawings up on my studio wall - four of them are still at the lake -- and was pleased to see how they talk to each other, and how together they start to add up to something more interesting than the individual drawings. That's encouraging.

We're having more snow here in Montreal today, with another storm coming this weekend. I figure I have just this current month to continue in a winter frame of mind, so I need to keep at these. There are nine so far, including two that are sketches, and I'd like to have at least twelve to choose from, better yet fifteen, by the time spring can be felt in the air, and the snow begins to recede at last. One of the drawings I plan to do is of the same field you can see in the summer painting, standing on the floor.