Garden, Forest, and Paint

On a recent morning in my garden, I was struck anew by the tenacity of life bursting forth from winter's grip. As I turned fragrant soil, uprooted stubborn weeds, moved long-legged perennials, and as earthworms and milipedes scuttled away - I had to marvel at life's abundance.

Two local painters who also study the natural life of the North Country are Lee Ann Sporn and Meg Bernstein - both of whom have been subjects of previous posts in the blog. (Click here and here to read some of these.)

Now, the two have mounted a show together in the Cantwell Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library. They have spent the last year visiting the Debar Wilderness area, together and individually, and painting their observations of it.

Each artist works in both watercolor and acrylic, and though each has a distinct style, they harmonize. Lee Ann's watercolor pieces are in the tradition of botanical illustration - she is a biologist, after all, and her paintings are enriched by her careful examination of life's pathways and mechanisms. Her acrylic pieces, however, feature a looser approach: still clear, but more exuberant - perhaps a bit more playful than scientific.

In this exhibit, she pairs the watercolors and acrylics of similar subjects together; for example, above is her acrylic rendering of a jack-in-the-pulpit cluster; below, she depicts a single plant in watercolor. My photos do not do justice to the originals, but perhaps you can see how the watercolor features precise detailing, while the acrylic, though still carefully observed, has looser lines, a greater sense of playful energy.





Meg's pieces take the energy and playfulness even further. Her acrylic paintings remind me of a time I saw original oils by Vincent Van Gogh; the paint swoops with its own ideas, thick and sensuous, leaving luxuriant brushstrokes to hint at the hand behind the work. It's thrilling to see, and inviting to ponder.

Meg's pieces in this show are all landscapes; trees commune with clouds, while colors dance from water to mountain to sky and beyond. The watercolors, too, share the force and vibrancy of our lush North country.






Life is: celebrate! Enjoy art, and make some of your own! For inspiration, dig around in a garden, or walk through some woods, or go see Lee Ann's and Meg's work in Saranac Lake. Or - all of the above!

Bursting Barriers

This is the cover of a new book: "Rethinking Acrylic: Radical Solutions for Exploiting the World's Most Versatile Medium", by Patti Brady. -The world's most versatile medium? Some artists might quibble with that subtitle, but Brady uses acrylic in so many ways, it seems plausible...



Acrylic paint is a modern invention, part of the post-war plastics revolution (click here to read a previous post on that topic). While more traditional media such as oils and watercolors have been studied for centuries, we have had only the last few decades to play with acrylic paint. And yet, with creative minds and adventurous spirits, chemists and artists alike have pushed this new substance in exciting ways.




One of the most adventurous artists I know is Meg Bernstein, of Saranac Lake. Meg has embraced multiple media through the years, from fabric and beads to watercolor to computer art - and, always, acrylic. Her landscapes move with fluid, harmonious shapes and colors, leading the viewer to a fantasy world recognizably related to the Adirondacks, but brimming with previously unimagined possibilities. Meg also steps easily from the representational to the abstract; sometimes her paintings blur that line. Recently, Brady's book has been inspiring her to lots of new experiments.

Meg is a teacher and mentor to many artists, both formally at Paul Smiths College, and informally as an inspiring friend and advisor. Several years ago she took me under her wing, and taught me more about art than any three people I had ever known before; I continue to seek her guidance whenever I am perplexed.

Like now. I LOVE the ideas set forth in Brady's book - she uses color, texture, shape, and line with abandon, flinging forth materials and letting them take her where they want to go. She creates innovative surfaces for ink-jet printing, and incorporates these into larger pieces. She pours, drips, scrapes, carves, slathers, and crackles her way through her art.

So does Meg!

But I have trouble achieving the joyful release of their work. I have generally created representational art - which I still enjoy - but I am trying to increase my fluency with color, shape, and texture through acrylics. I am striving to break my own barriers of ideas and intention, to let the medium itself direct my work to a greater degree.

Meg is a master at this - when I see her work, I am encouraged - and challenged! And fortunately, she maintains a permanent (but always changing!) display at the Adirondack Artists Guild here in Saranac Lake. And, together with Lee Ann Sporn, she has a show opening at the Cantwell Community Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library on May 27th. (Click here and here to read earlier posts about Lee Ann's work.) When that show is up, I will write about it here.

In the meantime, I will continue to experiment, explore, and try to relinquish a degree of control in my work. It's not easy - but what of value is? Through this journey, I am relying on Patti Brady's new book, and on the dazzling work and solid insights of Meg Bernstein.

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!

Adirondack Linnaeus

You just never know who will turn out to be an artist.

Many scientists, trained to careful observation, are also creators of exquisite art works. A famous example of this is Carl Linnaeus, who illustrated his binomial system for the classification of living things in painstaking detail.

This tradition lives on in the North Country. Paul Smiths College biology professor Lee Ann Sporn has a long habit of clear, scientific thought and analysis, enabling her to translate and understand the minutiae of our natural world.

Have you ever strolled a forest path, blithely crushing underfoot the delicate tendrils of new plant life? And did you ever then stop, look, and repent of your carelessness? In Lee Ann's watercolor studies, lobes of fern, curls of blossom, even caterpillar-nibbled leaf edges all leap from their usual obscurity to command our attention, and to remind us of the wonders found in even the smallest living things. They bring to mind the words of William Blake: "To see a world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower..."

In her depiction of trillia clustered on a forest floor, shown above, we notice the veins which carry life-sap to the flowers, even as the industrious ant carries a morsel to its hill. Soft stamens poke forth above delicate stems, as pale springtime sunlight dapples the forest beyond.

Do you remember the feeling of cold, damp earth on a day that promises warmth, the fragrance of leaf mold and moisture? You will, when you look on Lee Ann's thoughtful botanicals.

Although her artistic explorations began in watercolor, Lee Ann has recently been exploring new directions in acrylic paint. Her on-line portfolio charts a journey of growth from a Linnaean style to a looser, more expressive exuberance.

Her mentor (and mine), Meg Bernstein, has helped Lee Ann mature into a wider realm of vision. Meg works broadly in color and shape, catching motion in luxurious brushstrokes. Her paintings, over the years, have developed almost to the abstract, while retaining a strong sense of air, light, and space. Though far from abstract, Lee Ann's work is moving toward a freedom of line clearly inspired by Meg's example.

Meg and Lee Ann will mount a show together this coming April, in the Cantwell Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library. The show will be based on their study of the Debar Forest area.

I, for one, am excited to see Lee Ann's scientific, artistic vision continue to develop.