Growing Art

Change is inevitable.

Look at a newborn, compared to a toddler; consider the toddler alongside a teenager.

Those of us past the age of such dramatic developmental growth still change in one way or another; and while the body continues to mature, a mind open to to quests and experiments can grow in vital, energizing ways.

Some time ago I wrote about Lee Ann Sporn, a scientist and artist, whose powers of observation and interpretation remind me of the great Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. I included an image of one of Lee Ann's botanical watercolors, a study of springtime trillia.

How artists can change and grow! Reproduced above is one of Lee Ann's recent works!

One obvious difference is a change in media: Lee Ann adventurously broke away from watercolor and began working in acrylic. However, acrylic is enough like watercolor that, had she chosen, she could have continued in the precise, carefully observed style of her earlier pieces.

Instead, look at what she has been doing! Without sacrificing a strong sense of realism, her work is now much more emotional, more expressive. The sweeping strokes of color, the dynamic energy, the freedom of line - these remind me much more of the Group of Seven than of any scientific illustration!

Although this is but a copy of a photo of a painting, you can still see how Lee Ann has layered her colors - in the lower left side, the grain of the canvas is yet visible, revealing the burnt sienna undercoat. This is a technique for imparting warmth and depth to a painting, espoused by the multi-media artist and teacher Meg Bernstein. In fact, Lee Ann just spent a semester in Meg's Acrylic Painting Class at Paul Smiths College (where Lee Ann herself teaches science).

To paraphrase, with suitable apologies to Shakespeare: "What a piece of work is a human! How noble in reason - how infinite in faculty!"

For just as the infant synthesizes perception into thought and language, so as adults can we learn new forms of expression. Lee Ann's latest work is every bit as expressive as her earlier pieces - but she is learning, and using, a whole new language!