At 76, An Artist Reflects

One is only 75 for a brief year, and then that age is gone. So as I await another New Year, I also await my new age with the joy and sadness that accompanies one-plus-three quarters of a century.

2022 was a productive year. Two shows of my Artist Books brought home to me the depth and breadth of my work in that medium. Sometimes you cannot see the forest for the trees. Solo shows can clarify and broaden  perspectives.

As time goes on, more than ever, making art has become my life. I work in my studio almost every day. When I miss a day, I feel lost. Art infuses my life with a sublime sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, even if it goes unobserved by anyone else.

I have become an increasingly self-sufficient, self-reliant artist. I know what I am doing. My work is my own, my voice, and that knowledge buttresses my efforts.

At 76 I enjoy shedding old patterns, and reinventing the way I do things. Each new work is a new  beginning even when it is related to an earlier work. I have grown accustomed to difficulties. Instead, I enjoy challenges. I am patient with myself. I have learned to wait, to let the process play out, to let the picture emerge. I don’t despair.

Besides the work, there is friendship. With age, I have grown more appreciative of my friends. They are my anchors. Our shared pasts give me perspective, past and present. If I need help with something that neither I nor Edwina can do, they are there for us, as I am for them. It is comforting to know one is not alone.

And as my age increases, I am happy to be healthy and well. So many others are fighting illnesses, and mortality is always not far from my mind. I am thinking about the way I want to be remembered, the good I hope to leave when I  depart this world.

After fifteen years of retirement, I finally have stopped setting my alarm clock. Life is just a brief moment between eternities.

DRAWING THE HOLOCAUST

A friend, after seeing one of my wax crayon drawings based on the Holocaust asked, “why do you make drawings about the Holocaust?”

I was surprised. My friend is knows the historical, philosophical and moral importance of the Holocaust. She is also knows that the Holocaust holds a personal significance for me; that the members of my family that remained in Poland and Greece were probably exterminated, and with their deaths disappeared my connection to my family’s past. Why ask a question with so obvious an answer?

I realized that I was being asked to explain why I chose the Holocaust as a subject of my art. My answer required that I recall the artistic challenges and social issues that moved me, twenty years ago, to begin this series, still ongoing, of more then thirty wax crayon and pen & ink drawings. 

I explained to my friend that I was challenged by the problem of scale. How does one create an image that captures the enormity of the Nazi apparatus of death and destruction? In a work of art, can an image of one person or a group of people signify millions of victims?

A second challenge was discovering an expressive image that was neither stereotypical nor trite. There are many emotionally charged images associated with the Holocaust. I can see a few when I close my eyes. What image could I find that was unique and had a personal resonance? Additionally, the image had to have an objective basis, and be a reflection of reality, containing references, information and connections to the actual destructive process. I didn't want abstractions. I wanted essences without being pedantic.

PILE OF SPECTACLES I, PEN + INK, 22" X 26," 2014

First, I chose my medium, wax crayons, whose viscous texture soft and oily like fat and flesh. Wax crayons allow a thick surface to be built-up which can be cut or carved by a sharp pointed instrument. In this way a multiple of levels of line and imagery to be constructed, one on top of another, as if seen through a glass darkly.              

Morally, I had as a humanistic goal the idea to expand the Holocaust to the world-at-large without losing its particular meaning or connection to Jews, the primary target of the Nazis genocide.

My first drawing, completed in 1997, was Pile of Spectacles. (wax crayon, 18 x 24,” MiTientes Paper). The idea to draw glasses evolved from a series of my own reading glasses that rested in front of me on my desk at work. At work, I would draw clandestinely, (co-workers called it “doodling”), whatever was close-by and unobtrusive.

As I intuitively worked on the Holocaust drawings, the pile of glasses gradually took on a number of meanings: the glasses morphed in bodies with arms and legs extended in all directions, each lens,  enclosing a person’s eye--sight be a primary sense by which the world is experienced-- refers to an individual's consciousness whose voice is extinguished. 

The mountainous appearance of the heap of glasses provides a feel of enormity. Something frightening is about to happen. A darkness has come over the land. Blood will be shed. The light is apocalyptic but rather than being macabre, it is an unworldly light that gives victims an anonymous presence, a dignity, and a spiritual transcendence.

The drawings, as I continued to work, evolved gradually over time. Making art is the process of allowing the unknown to become known. It is a process of self discovery.  

To see additional images in this series, click here