Time to Wrap Up

This Eason’s work is coming to an end. Spring is almost here, and everything I have been looking at and painting in the past few months will be gone very shortly.

Believe it or not, I could go on painting winter: the colors and spaces I have been studying are making their way into me and I am beginning to see where I can take the work farther. That will make for a very good start next winter. But before I put the sketches away, I want to take a long look at them and ask myself:

What have I learned that I can apply to the next body of work?
What do I want to bring forward, and how?

Some things I don’t command: they simply happen after I’ve done the work of careful observation. Then stepping back and reviewing the work also fosters new ideas.

So now it’s time to wrap up my sketches, but not before I take from them what will grow with the next season.

Louise Jalbert,  “Blue Shadow”,  2018,  Gouache on paper, 11 x 14 inches

 

Winter is Fading Out

Winter is slowly relenting, notwithstanding its customary uproars. Though snow keeps falling, it now melts soon after falling to the ground. As it does, it becomes gray and brown.

March is a month of grays, as if winter was fading out, and its colors are too. On cloudy days, the whole color range seems to become a nuance of gray. Yet even in this chromatic austerity, nature offers a lesson of abundance and variety.

As a painter, it’s an opportunity to deepen my understanding of neutral colors and values. In painting, values are the relative lightness to darkness of a color, for example a very pale brown to an almost black brown.

This is an exercise in subtlety, in appreciating the bare beauty that is unfolding before me. As winter is departing, it seems to be washing out all colors before nature sets itself for their comeback in the great renewal.

 

Louise Jalbert, “Early March Colors”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 8.5 x 11.5 inches

Birds and Drawing

A few weeks ago, I noticed two birds, a male and a female Northern Cardinal, singing in a bush that stands in front of my window.
A welcome sign of spring!

As a nice coincidence, the same day I received an email from my friend Dagmar Frinta, with her recent drawings and observations of birds.
I love Dagmar’s drawings, and thought these were too beautiful not to share.
http://www.dfrinta.com

An artist’s sketchbook is an intimate place of experiment and essays: having the chance to leaf through one is a privilege and a joy : that of being in touch with the inner most process of the artist and the day to day efforts or musings.
I am very grateful for Dagmar’s openness to share hers.

As often in a sketchbook, these drawings were done for the pleasure of drawing, as a way of getting in touch with herself and her art: something I relate to easily.

          

Dagmar’s fine draftmanship is obvious as she revels in depicting the birds’s various features and colors.

Her drawings have a tenderness that reflect her sensitivity to those vibrant and often enchanting creatures. They serve no other purpose but to see and understand, which makes them all the more endearing and above all, alive.

 
Dagmar Frinta, “European Starling”, “Woodpeckers”, “White-breasted Nuthatch”, “American Crow”, 2018, Colored pencils in notebook, 6 x 4 inches
Photos: Dagmar Frinta

Sketch # 5

As much as I’d like to move forward with this painting, my pace is that of a snail right now. It takes me time to assimilate what I observe and transform it into a painting.

Is it better than the first one? Maybe, but that is not the point. What matters is that I did several of those, and doing so, I had a deep conversation with the winter blues,
observing, learning and infusing my mind and hands with forms and colors..

Now, I will give this a rest, and let my memory absorb while I work on something else.

Here in Québec, life is quietly preparing for spring underneath the frozen soil, and so is my process right now. Patiently germinating.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blues, Study # 5”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 8 x 10 inches

Repetition

To learn, we need repetition. That’s the way our brain processes new information.
https://www.brainscape.com/blog/2011/05/repetition-is-the-mother-of-all-learning/

So I must be deep into learning because I started this sketch wanting to take it further than the previous one, but I didn’t go very far. It’s a new and complicated subject, so obviously, I need to do more studies before I know it well enough. At this stage, it’s normally a bit of a struggle, with too many things calling for my attention, not knowing yet what to choose.

But I did learn a few things: the colors in the background are better and so are the blue branches in the foreground. That’s where I am for now.

So patience and curiosity will be required, and a lot of elbow grease. Probably with some repetition along the way.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blues, study #2”, 2018, Gouache on paper,  11 x 14 inches

Painting the Blues

I’ve been meaning to paint the winter blues.
Blues and whites and pinks.

After a fresh snowfall, when it is sunny, the white ground reflects these colors, sometimes strikingly. It can be quite beautiful, especially at sunrise or sunset. February and March are the best months to see that, because the sun is stronger and there is more light.

In this sketch, I’ve put down some ideas about color that I’d like to develop.

It is carefully observed and rather descriptive, but that’s the way I often start. Minutely, I get acquainted with a subject, and make my way into its various features. I want to know them so well that they become imprinted in my memory. Once I have internalized the visual reality, I can focus on extricating the vision it has inspired me.

So I will be doing such studies for the next few weeks, while developing my vision of the winter blues in the process.
There are only two months left for this season…at least for this year.

Louise Jalbert, “Winter Blue, sketch #1”, 2018, Gouache on paper, 11 x 14 inches.

Amending the Soil

I have been doing my inventory. It is a tedious exercise, but I have learned to appreciate it. Going through the process brings a vantage point from which to review the work done during the previous year, in this case three years, and that invariably triggers a reflexion.

As I look at each piece, I come across the ideas they explored and I can evaluate if I want to take them farther or develop something else from their potential. That creates a fertile ground from which to prepare my next year of work.

Then I clean the studio to make way for fresh mental and physical space. But before I put everything away, I keep a few chosen pieces. Some are accomplished, some are unresolved, begging to be taken care of. I put them on a wall, along with images of other artists, inspiring objects or photos that remind me of a composition, a group of colors, an impression. Together, they foster a silent but rich conversation.

I love having such a composition in front of me: it is a world of imagination and possibilities, a rich soil where my eyes can wander to renew their vision.
It is my feeding ground that I carefully amend.

 

Photo 1 : Louise Jalbert, “Red on Yellow Foliage”, 2016-2017, watercolor on paper, 7 x 11 and 15 x 22 inches, and various sketches, reproductions from the art of Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, David Hockney, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and W.M.Turner.
Photo 2: Louise Jalbert, Watercolors from “Le nez dans l’herbe” series.

Drawing

“Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see – to see correctly –
and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye”.

Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

Louise Jalbert, “Study of the garden, October”, 2014, Felt markers on paper, 4.5 x 6 inches

The Falling Snow

Watching falling snow is always a bit magical.
Unless you are driving, of course.

But if for a few minutes, I put aside the idea of any inconveniences it may bring,
and simply look at this phenomena, it becomes fascinating. Just as fun and captivating as watching the release of white specks on little winter scenes in snowglobes. Only now you are under a much bigger globe.

Though they are part of the charm, I won’t expand here on the beauty of silvery snowflakes. What I observe is that suddenly the air becomes more visible, revealed by the floating crystals. The closer ones are larger, the farther ones are smaller, creating a sense of depth.
They do so dynamically: whirling in bursts, or descending quietly, and they form a silent choreography orchestrated by the clouds and the wind, constantly recreating itself in front of my eyes. The sky is white, colors are muted, and forms of buildings, cars, trees become blurred.

This creates altogether another sense of space, because now air is not a void, but a space that is inhabited, alive and animated.
It has a presence.

That is always the case, but with falling snow, we get to see it.

Louise Jalbert, “Falling Snow, January, 2018”, Gouache on paper, 9 x 12 inches

Maud

I met an impressive fellow painter recently.

Actually, I saw a movie about her life, but the impression that she left on me was strong enough to make it feel like an encounter. Her name was Maud Lewis, and she lived near the village of Digby, in Nova Scotia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maud_Lewis

The movie, “Maudie”, tells the story of her life, an uncommonly difficult but inspiring life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCZ_guQTGNw

Difficult because Maud suffered of rheumatoïod arthritis, a condition that left her progressively more crippled as she aged. And hard, because she was poor.

But she loved to paint. And though Maud Lewis never received any formal training in art, she had imagination, sensitivity to the world around her and a great determination to let that be. Not an easy feat for an invalid woman living in a rural area at the time. Her drive was not for recognition; it was more of a deep, vital need to paint the world as she saw it and to surround herself by her own definition of life and it’s beauty.

Unexpectedly, she did become a well-known folk artist, selling her small paintings, mostly 8 x 10 inches, to local people and passers by, at an average price of 3$. Her art is bold in color and playful in composition, it is genuine in its evocation of her world. And it has emotional stamina, just like she did.

But what touched me the most about Maud Lewis was the radiance emanating from her smile, and her capacity to extract joy from a life that others might have found despairing. That’s an impressive lesson in resilience and love.

Maud Lewis, Image from the documentary”A World Without Shadows” by Diane Beaudry, National Film Board of Canada.