ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
sketching a kind of sense
By Jesse Aron Green Artist-in-Residence
Larch Avenue near Auburn Lake , September 2020 hen you think of an artist sketching ,
W do you picture a solitary figure upon a wind-swept hill , drawing with pencil on a pad of fine-grained paper ? Is her drawing beautiful and simple ? Let ’ s say that it is , and more beautiful because of how she has reduced the scene to the essential attributes that define it , using line , scale , and perspective . Perhaps her sketch is inspired by what Nabokov called “ the fault-finding light of spring days ,” which shows the glaring truth .
I sometimes sketch this way . During the months of social distancing , I spent many solitary hours drawing the landscape of Mount Auburn . However , if our image of the artist at work resembles the nineteenth century more than our own , an update might serve us well . Sketching , after all , is not confined to markings on paper . Sculptors make preparatory models in clay called maquettes . Filmmakers have storyboards , rushes , and rough-cuts . These share a purpose : when we sketch , we discover the elements that matter most about a subject or visual scene . We teach ourselves how to look . One of the things I care most about is history . It teaches us why we are as we are ; it can tutor us to change for the better or worse according to our nature , circumstances , or choice . So let me ask a second question : what comes to mind when you think of an artist sketching under the light — be it glorifying or fault-finding — of history ?
Here ’ s what I do . I put pencil to paper , but first I look at how my subject has been handled by artists who came before me . Then I read deeply on my subject . And sometimes I even engage in processes borrowed from fields outside the arts . ( For example , I might do something like ethnography with the members of a community before making a project for them .) Many artists call this last step “ interdisciplinary ,” which is a vague word for something that is hopefully specific and precise .
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