ARTIST''S NOTES: Artist's Who have Inspired my Work--Featuring Auguste Rodin

Yesterday I had the wonderful opportunity to experience the exhibition, "Rodin: Evolution of a Genius".  The exhibit, at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in Richmond, VA.,  features 200 works of the great French sculptor.  Whenever I have the opportunity to view a collection of Rodin's sculpture, I am rewarded with new inspiration for my own art and creative processes.  In addition to viewing this exhibit of Rodin's art, I have been fortunate to have visited the Musee Rodin in Paris; and to have attended another exhibit of the artist's sculpture, several years back, at the Dayton Art Institute, in Ohio. 

This exhibit highlighted the working methods of Rodin and detailed how the artist was ever creating new compositions by recombining parts of previous works.  In essence, Rodin's manner of working was organic.  The creative process was ongoing as new forms inspired and often were physically recombined to give birth to new creative form.

Rodin's manner of working in this way has directly inspired my working methods--even though I primarily work with the 2-dimensional art-forms, such as paintings, prints, and drawings. I do not consider works "finished".  While I do bring them to a state of resolution--I leave open the possibility that the work may be given a new aesthetic life through alteration, or by its being integrated (in part or whole) into an emerging composition.

The artist's expressive treatment of the figure has also provided the inspiration for several of my prints and mixed-media works created for "The Book of Eve: Songs of the Spirit, Hymns of the Flesh", (which is my hand-illuminated manuscript of my poetry). One of Rodin's works that inspired my art is the sculpture, "Meditation".  This work actually inspired two of the artworks for the pages of "The Book of Eve".
  

The mixed-media illumination (that is the featured artwork on the inside cover page of my volume of poetry) is one of the illuminations that were inspired by Rodin's "Meditation". To create this artwork, I had my daughter pose in a manner similar to Rodin's sculpture. For the second artwork that was inspired by "Meditation", I worked with the spirit of the pose of Rodin's sculpture--and placed the figure in a landscape setting.

 I composed the landscape features in such a manner that the dynamic curve of the figure is counterbalanced by the vertical support of the line of the upright tree; and harmonized with the upward curve of the horizontal tree.  Just as Rodin worked with the interchange between the figurative forms, and the inter-spaces (or the open spaces between and surrounding forms), this design of my composition creates a unity between figure and ground.  The rhythmic inter-play between positive form and the spaces between provides a sculptural dimension to the drawing.