Voice
The voice of an artist, or voice of a writer–have you heard those terms before?
My son, Andrew Brandmeyer is an artist, and teaches art at the university level. I consider him an expert so I asked him, “How can you tell what artist painted which painting. I find it fascinating that some people can identify the artist by brushstrokes.”
Andrew said, “Monet being one of the Impressionists used loose brushstrokes. He also was one of the first to use a technique known as broken colour. The term impressionism was based on a critics negative review of one his paintings, “Impression Sunrise.” Leonardo da Vinci was famous for many things. These include being an inventor and anatomist as well as a painter. There is so much about him that I’m not going to bore you with a lengthy history lesson. He was one of the Italian Renaissance painters.
Monet and Leonardo da Vinci were quite different in their approaches to painting, being from movements that were 400 years or so apart.”
Then like a good professor, he sent me to do some checking on my own. Here’s what I discovered.
Jackson Pollack– that’s an artist’s name I knew, so I googled him. Pollock is well-known for his drip/ action paintings. It was pretty much the last approach he had to painting before his passing. In his earlier works he did use a brush and his work ranged from representational to abstract. He was a student of Thomas Benton at the Art Students League. Now that I know that I ‘see’ it in his paintings. Take a look at Number 8. I’ll wait.
What I discovered about Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci is he was a Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. Yes, Wikipedia is my friend, sometimes. Leonardo da Vinci was more anatomically correct in that he was a realist painter. Look at Lady with Ermine
I’m not an expert, but I see the MATH, it’s exacting to me–almost measured.
Looking at Monet’s Impression Sunrise I see the loose brushstrokes, with other colors popping through, but it’s a painting that makes me comfortable. I ‘feel’ Monet’s voice, much like I feel my writer’s voice.
Maybe I’m a loose describer?
Writers have a voice too. Think about your favorite writers, is it the style or the stories that keep you coming back for more? My friend and writer Julie Lessman writes with lots of details making sure you see where her characters are and what they are doing. Another writer friend Camy Tang writes with a fast pace which takes my breath away sometimes. If you handed me a sheet of paper with some of their work typed on it I would be able to tell from the writer’s voice who wrote it, much like my son can identify an artist.
Are there other creative people you would know their work by sight or sound? I know I could pick out my friend Janice’s, fudge out of a line up.
Diana
*don’t forget to head over and grab some of these great book deals they won’t last long. Mind of Her Own is $1.99 through Saturday.
