house and barn

What is it about this tableau that I am so riveted by? Before I even finished the drawing I did of this farmhouse yesterday, I was thinking about doing the next one. The barn and house both sit right along the edge of a slope that runs down to the river, the ridge beams of their roofs not quite aligned but exactly parallel. Steeply pitched over the main structure then continuing at a shallower pitch over an open sided extension, the roofs of the ruined barn mimic the pitch of the land. It squats behind the house and slightly below it, as the ridge drops in elevation to the west. The house itself is on the highest ground. You can see a larger view in the gallery: http://scottstultz.squarespace.com/drawings/barns-and-farmscapes/

Not drizzly out there this afternoon when I went up to draw, but cold and windy enough to keep me in the back seat of my old Saab, although with the window rolled down so at least I wasn't looking through a pane of glass. People slowed down and stared as they drove by, wondering what the weirdly intent looking guy was doing, bundled up and sitting alone in the back seat of a beat up old car parked along the roadside.

house and barn, 17 x 11, Derwent Inktense pencils

abandoned

Just on the edge of the two mile long sliver of the Susquehanna riverbank that is Marietta borough, a hundred yards from relatively busy Route 441, there is a large empty farmhouse. For some years now it's been owned by a prosperous local insurance company. I know nothing of its history. At one time I imagine that it was home to a happy and busy farm family, with young children running around laughing and shrieking, the older ones working in the fields or the large barn, and wonderful smells wafting from a well run kitchen. But that would have been a long time ago. It's been boarded up, and is being allowed to decay and crumble.

Still, every time pass it on my way to Mt. Joy or Lancaster, I'm struck by its imposing presence, defining the ridge that it sits atop. Stately even in disrepair, defiant of its abandoned state. I can't help but feel stirred and bolstered by its resolute character, especially on this bleak and soggy February day.

abandoned house, 17 x 11, colored pencil

resistance

Feeling guilt ridden when I don't draw, I have to use all kinds of tactics with myself to get started. It really isn't so difficult, taking a few minutes to observe and draw. The problem is all about expectations and anxieties. Expecting to be inspired. Anxiety about falling far short of inspired results, even with a quick little pencil drawing. Murkier existential bullshit.

So the brutal "just do it" while Gabe was getting ready to go to school this morning was sufficient to get me to sit down and start. After dropping him off (or switching drivers and driving myself home - Gabe is learning to drive), I picked it back up and finished before coming up to the studio. The dragging anchor of too much self criticism forces one to learn how to breathe underwater. What a lot of needless drama. If you can't be a bird today, be a fish.

view from the living room towards the entry hall, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4, 2B graphite and Prismacolor pencils

studies

From the time that I first began to look at art books as a seventh grader during my free periods, I have been captivated with unfinished studies. Albrecht Dürer's carefully detailed pencil drawing of a rabbit, Michelangelo's work in preparation for the Libyan Sybil on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Andrew Wyeth's tonal studies of the weatherbeaten Olsen house. The completed masterpieces so often felt static and staged, too resolved. The studies, filled with wandering lines and patches of concentrated detail as the artist strived to understand his subject, to discover what excited his mind and his eye, are so raw and much more immediate and authentic to me.

I don't mean to minimize the skill, patience, and discipline required to paint a more finished work. As an artist not to be compared to such masters as these, I bow to their incomparable achievements. But where I feel most connected to them is through the early studies, those intimate glimpses into the artist's process. And it is where I am happiest.

talbert and lindner, 2B graphite pencil

mid February

This morning finds me at loose ends, with a rare Saturday ahead of me clear of immediately pressing deadlines after a productive week in the studio, and everyone in my family out of the house until perhaps tomorrow evening. I should be on my way to Washington to wander through the Renwick or the National Gallery, or parking my car in the shadow of that great tomb of art, the Philadelphia Museum, to look at early Pennsylvania furniture masterpieces or breathtaking works by brilliant artists of the past.

But the mid February blahs must have a grip on me, because it's already nearly ten-thirty, and here I am, groomed and dressed yet all but inert, still secluded in my own brick and stone sarcophagus, unwilling to muster enthusiasm to do much more than brew myself a second cup of coffee. And smear darkness into my sketchbook.

talbert, lindner, and cold coffee, 11 1/2 x 8 1/4, Derwent Inktense pencils

self portrait minus smile, 2B graphite pencil