I found shelter in Jackson Pollack’s paintings as a teenager. Then began my regular visitations to the Vermeer’s at the Met. Now, 30 years later, I find deep peace in front of a Bierstadt and am awed by the work of Fredrick Church and Thomas Cole. Home was not a place for me, but a vision other artists had as I found my own. Chuck Close’s portraits thrilled me yet George Tooker’s drawings completely took me in. His work spoke the language of graphite. He was an artist closely watching graphite shine as it caught the tooth of paper too.
Graphite Drawing as a Necessity > If you overlook (as if you could) the vigor of her technique, the drawings of Carol Rowan (b. 1960) might suggest a placid kind of enterprise, a sort of plein air ease that just happens to result in these almost crystalline renderings of the world. But from the start of her career, the Connecticut-raised, Pratt Institute-educated artist has been all business.