DRAWING CHALLENGE VII

We are thrilled to announce Grace DeGennaro, Frances Hynes, Erick Johnson, and Jennifer Printz as the featured contestants of our Drawing Challenge VII, which was inspired by Correspondences, a poem by Charles Baudelaire, which is part of Les Fleurs du mal (1857).
We would like to thank the artist Catherine Drabkin for suggesting these lines.

Nature is a temple where living pillars
Let escape sometimes confused words;
Man traverses it through forests of symbols
That observe him with familiar glances.

Like long echoes that intermingle from afar
In a dark and profound unity,
Vast like the night and like the light,
The perfumes, the colors and the sounds respond.

There are perfumes fresh like the skin of infants
Sweet like oboes, green like prairies,
—And others corrupted, rich and triumphant

That have the expanse of infinite things,
Like ambergris, musk, balsam and incense,
Which sing the ecstasies of the mind and senses.

Frances Hynes, House, Whale, handprints and compressed charcoal on Strathmore 100% cotton paper, 19 x 25 inches

“This work is part of a series of about 60 drawings. I think it has a humorous aspect to it, which comes out in my work from time to time, and a quality I think is rare in art. I feel an affinity to architectural imagery and often use the simple image of the Cape Cod style home in which I grew up and where I still live. I also like to play with art materials and often work with my hands, and include organic imagery as well. I feel the drawing allows the viewer to imagine some situation, perhaps in relation to this current Corona Crisis we are living through right now.”

- Frances Hynes, 2020

Jennifer Printz, The Hard Edge, 2020, graphite and Epson Ultrachrome inks on antique paper, 12 x 18 1/2 inches

“I wonder about the imperceptible quality of stars in the noonday sun, what forces hold clouds up in the sky, and what arranges the sundry of the universe. This work is about the relationship of these and many other unknown things and a faith in their existence that is strong enough to try to visualize and recreate them. It is about working towards understanding of the natural world in both a tangible physical way and a subtler spiritual one. Through a progressive buildup of graphite, my hand asserts itself over photographs I have taken of the sky. The process is, to me, a loving process of focused attention and deliberate mark making as well as a meditative means of creating that reflects my visceral energies into the finished work through many hours of prolonged touch. The work then contains within it an intersection of humanity and nature, as well as a vast sense of intrinsic history.”

- Jennifer Printz, 2020
www.jenniferprintz.com