Clara and Peter Morrow are characters in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery novels. These characters especially interest me because they are artists: painters. These are not graphic novels so there are no illustrations in these books. The reader is left to imagine the paintings that Clara and Peter create based on the author’s descriptions.
Peter’s paintings sell. He chooses a subject and then somehow magnifies his subject multiple times and that is what he paints. While his paintings sell for a lot of money, it takes him a very long time to complete one so even though they sell, his work doesn’t make a huge amount of money for living expenses.
I have fun imagining Peter’s paintings. Since I have an art background, I know a bit more than a non-artist reader might about techniques. I assume that Peter’s using oil paints and that these paintings are very large. He’s probably using a lot of glazes which means that he’s mixing his oil paints with linseed oil. This thins the paint and makes it transparent allowing the artist to create many layers of colors which creates amazing color affects. And waiting for a layer to dry so that another layer can be added takes time, hence the reason why it may take Peter a long time to finish one painting.
What isn’t clear is how Peter magnifies his subject matter. So I used Google Images to look at microscopic images. There are lots of them. Scientists have magnified everything you can imagine from body parts and plant matter and rocks, and all sorts of chemical molecules. If you didn’t know what you were looking at these photographs are very abstract. Microscopic stuff looks like designs made with intertwining lines and shapes and colors. Inspired, I created a few abstract paintings using photos of microscopic stuff for my subjects. My paintings are very small, no glazing applied. I just wanted to experiment.
Clara settles on portraits for her subject matter. Sometimes, according to Ms. Penny’s descriptions, all it takes is a dot of white in the portrait subject’s eye to bring a portrait subject to startling life. You might wonder how a single dot of color would accomplish that but that is entirely possible. How color is used makes amazing differences in the look of a finished artwork. What colors, how much of any given color, what color is next to another color. All these tiny different choices matter.
I’ve challenged my art students with a specific color lesson. I ask them to choose five colors that they dislike, that they think are awful colors, and to create a picture using those colors. Then we discuss whether those pictures are awful because of their color choices. And what they learn is that there’s nothing wrong with any group of colors just because one person doesn’t like them. It’s all about how those colors are used in the picture.
That brings up the subject of what makes a picture good. Is it inspired, special, a masterpiece, as opposed to just another piece of average artwork? That’s a complicated question. There’s many a story in art history of artworks that were vilified when they were created and are now considered masterpieces. The work of Vincent Van Gogh is an example. Vincent sold one painting in his lifetime and his work is now worth zillions of dollars. Beauty – and quality – truly are in the eye of the beholder. Artwork that inspires one person will make another person yawn, or cringe.
Descriptions of Clara’s art also inspired me. I’ve done portraits of interesting subjects to use as teaching tools to show students a variety of possible styles and techniques. Are they good? Special? That’s for viewers to decide for themselves.
So you might try Louise Penny’s novels. They are awesome stories.
And the next time you look at paintings, ask your self why you do or don’t like them. Take a few moments to really look. Don’t just glance, snap a cell phone photo, and walk away. Absorb the details. What’s the subject? How did the artist arrange the objects in the picture? What color choices were made? Can you say what makes a difference in your opinion? It’s complicated, and that’s part of the fun of looking in the first place!
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