First came across the work of Agnes Martin, in an amazingly diverse book on drawing by Tania Kovatz.
it's a relief to relate to drawings that aren't just figurative and have an element of meditative art to them.
Read up more about the artist after discussion with tutor Vera Boelmer Kahn. There's a wonderful large section of handwritten notes by the artist in the book in the library about her. I think it's her prep notes for a speech she gave to some graduating art students. On yellow paper with grey lines, the blue biro scrawls across the pages notebook size inserted in the middle of the book in a clump.
There's some great quotations and somewhat reassuringly and predictably there's mention of koans and meditation
Still looking outward to other artists to find a connection and resonance with their own personal histories and stories as if I need that to justify what I like. Am not comparing myself in any other way....
Canadian born, in the vast prarieland of Saskatchewan in 1912, Martin studied in Oregon, California and New Mexico. Despite a stint in New York she spent the majority of her life in rural big sky america, finally settling near Taos in New Mexico. Her ashes are buried under an apricot tree in the grounds of where her work is now exhibited.
Described as an abstract painter her contemporaries and friends included Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, and Donald Judd. Her style was more influenced by the spiritual than the intellectual so she preferred to be described as an abstract expressionist. She was interested in eastern buddhist philosophies as guidance for living rather than a discipline.
Martin praised Mark Rothko for having "reached zero so that nothing could stand in the way of truth". Following his example Martin also pared down to the most reductive elements to encourage a perception of perfection and to emphasize transcendent reality. Her signature style was defined by an emphasis upon line, grids, and fields of extremely subtle color.
Her works contains flaws and signs of the artist's hand.
Known for her grid patterned works before moving to new mexico after 1967 her works until then had been brown/black.
“When I first made a grid,” Martin said, “I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then this grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence . . . and so I painted it and then I was satisfied. I thought, this is my vision.” Martin made fine vertical lines and lightly shaded horizontal bands in oil and pencil, softening the geometric structure, which seems to expand beyond the confines of the canvas. For Martin the grid evoked not a human measure but an ethereal one—the boundless order or transcendent reality associated with Eastern philosophies.
Keep it simple stupid.
References:
1. Glimcher,A., 2012. Agnes AMrtin: Painting, Writings, Remembrances by Arne Glimcher, United Kingdom: Phaidon Press Ltd.
2. Kovatz,T., 2007 The Drawing Book: A Survey of the Primary Means of Expression, United Kingdom: Black Dog Publishing.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Martin
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