Painting as Seeing, by Isabel Llosa
Yesterday evening, as I watched firefly-spangled fields whir past the car window on the way back from Lancaster Galleries, I realized what being at Mount Gretna these past two weeks has taught me: that the more I paint, the more I see the world around me. After two intense weeks of nonstop painting and drawing and looking at art, I see more than I’ve ever seen: the way dark green trees frame the edge of a slanting sunlit roof, the dancing geometric shapes that connect path to tree to field, the lines, or intervals that connect points in space and form the basis of all drawing, as Ro Lohin taught us this past week in her lecture and critiques.
In our drawing class last week with Jay Noble, we began by looking, searching drawings by Matisse and Giacometti for the shapes beyond the figure, the tension and pressure built by marks upon marks, always correcting, seeking to see what’s there and translate it to the page. Giacometti said, “My drawings and paintings don’t look like things, they look like looking at things,” a testament to the process of slow, meditative looking that is deeply rooted in the practice of observational painting.
Over the past two weeks, Carrie Patterson has taught us to see each color’s value and hue as relative to those of the colors around it. “Find your glue color,” she reminded us last Monday as we mixed palettes for color studies. “That’s a midtone that can change in value and hue depending on what you surround it with.”
I think I have yet to find the glue color in my paintings, that elusive element that ties together all the varying hues and tones and makes a painting whole. But I’m beginning at the beginning, the first step, which is to look at the colors and shapes around me and try to really see them. Oftentimes we don’t see what’s around us, or the people around us, not in a tangible or meaningful way. We go about our lives, keeping busy, always seeking to produce more, make more, and accumulate more. But if you stop and look, observe the everyday things around you, something magical might happen. Today I was sketching in the woods behind the community center when all of a sudden a deer crashed through the trees ahead of me, leaves quivering in its wake. Seconds later it was gone. I was filled with gratitude for this moment, for the gift that drawing and seeing had given me.
Seeing what’s around us is an integral part of being rooted in a place and connecting with the land, ecosystem, animals and people of that place. In our modern society, a deep connection to place is not so common anymore, but here in Mount Gretna I feel connected to a community of artists and people who are thoughtful about their relationship to place. Yesterday evening was the first time in over ten years that I’d seen more than five fireflies in one place at once. As human activity has altered ecosystems over the years, insects have lost their habitats and decreased in population, resulting in a decline in both the function and beauty of the natural world. In her lecture on Wednesday, Carrie answered environmentalist and naturalist John Muir’s question: “The astronomer looks high, the geologists low, but who looks between on the surface of the earth?” Her answer was us: the artists. It’s up to us to describe, to see and to help others to see what’s around us, so that we learn to care for the places we inhabit.