The last two years were a period of big life changes – luckily good ones! – that took a lot of my time and energy. Reorganizing the studio and preparing this book/catalogue are helping me to get back to focus in my artistic work. The text is in French (sorry…) but it shows mostly pictures of my intaglio work. You can find it here: LizGlass Gravures. Enjoy!
Here are some new and old engravings to wet your appetite…
We just came back from a weekend show at Jaillans, a small rural village of the Drome (France). I brought my intaglio prints and J. showed his pictures, together with another selected 11 artists. It was a great experience! There were more than 500 visitors and a lot of curiosity about the way we work, technique, subjects… One person that touched me particularly was an 8-year old girl who followed my explanations very carefully, asked good questions, and announced that she wanted to buy one of my works. I asked if she was doing it with her own money, and she said yes. Her mother was trying to get her away, and I told her to come back later for the deal. The next day, I told the story to the mayor, who was able to identify the girl. She put me in contact with her grandparents who happened to be visiting around. Later, the whole family came back and the girl proudly explained to her father the basic techniques of engraving. She also started her art collection by choosing her print at the special price of one euro. We were both very happy!
I feel stuck in my art work, and questioning my choices. Watercolor is so hard, and struggling with the technique might be taking my attention off the message. Why am I doing this? Yesterday, a friend suggested that I might need more substance to support my gestures, and the possibility of a more open-ended, changing process than watercolor can allow. Maybe it is time to experiment with acrylic (oil does not attract me). Or stick to etching and engraving. Or move on into something completely different…
Therefore, I decided to spend this month at home alone, struggling with these questions. This first week was dedicated to revisiting the teachings from Marc’s workshop and trying to incorporate them into my own language. Here are the first results, reworking two images in several versions both in watercolor and inks. YOUR FEEDBACK IS NEEDED, thanks for commenting!
We spent a lot of time this July visiting major art shows: the Venice Biennale, the Biennale d’Aquarelle de Brioude and the Rencontres d’Arles de Photographie. A lot to see, absorb. digest… Venice: A lot of photo and video, land art and installations, sculpture, everything big and flashy and “in your face”, very appropriate for a culture with very short attention span. Visiting the Arsenale was frustrating, we spent eight hours practically running through the exhibit with a one-entry ticket, a bit like surfing the net or zapping the TV, but on your legs and under a terrible heat.I feel a bit prehistoric with my choice of techniques, apparently NOBODY is doing watercolor or etching in contemporary art!
Brioude is almost the opposite: lots of craftsmanship and bunches of enthusiastic amateurs who encircle the artists and bombard them with transcendental questions: what paper? what colors? what brushes? There was a show of technique and little innovation in the language. In fact, with a few honorable exceptions, most of the artists seem to develop their little formulas and repeat them to exhaustion. Guess what? Lots of big and flashy stuff as well, with little thought behind.
There I attended a workshop with Marc Folly, one of the great watercolorists of France. I learned a few things: (i) how to focus the work on values rather than color to bring depth and volume to the paintings; (ii)the making and use of a vast palette of greys and broken colors; (iii) the importance of planning your image through careful drawing and composition, and (iv) how far his technique is from my own expression and timing. It will be difficult to incorporate it to my current practice, much more impulsive and chaotic and expressionist…Still. building more control of the medium and its possibilities is a real need at this stage.
Here are the two exercises we made in class, following Marc’s step-by-step:
Two months visiting the children and grandchildren and mother-in-law (February and March) plus my mother’s visit in April, husband’s photo exhibit in May and my intaglio group show in June… This does not leave much time to work! However, there were some interesting developments in drawing and ink, have a look!
It is rare to find a male nude model, apparently they are a bit shy… This is only the second session within two years in which we got a man to pose for us! It was a great pleasure and challenge, as we get too used to draw all those round, soft women forms. These are large formats, and it was great fun to get back to big gestures.
This is a selection of the January 2011 works. I am still finding it hard to paint, drawing is much easier, but who wants it easy? Back to struggling with the color, subject, technique, composition… Trying to find my voice.
My health did not allow for painting large format watercolors, so for the rest of 2010 I did small drawings (20×30 cm). Also I was in a dark mood, confronting the aging process of women and its implications for one’s body.
I was quite happy with the learning on values, contrasts and composition. Will try to rework this approach with color later.
Last summer kept me busy with visitors, travelling to Berlin and some health troubles that required minor surgery. And lots of rest. Therefore, I didn’t work as regularly as planned.
Still, my experiments with portraits and the human body were a good learning experience. Here are some of the highlights:
I am practicing to combine ink drawing with watercolors on the live model sessions, as a follow-up to drawing with the brushes. I’ve learned that sequence matters: here are some colored drawings and drawn watercolors…
Liz Glass Art AdVentures 