Ad Libitum
by Wendy Artin
November 2nd – December 9th, 2018
Wendy Artin’s Exhibition, AD LIBITUM, presents Rome – large scale charcoal drawings of the River God by Bernini from the fountains in Piazza Navona, atmospheric sepia Roman landscapes, and still life.
In medium and small-scale format sizes, Wendy Artin has painted views and landscapes of Rome and Villa Adriana that will be on exhibited until December 9th. Still life watercolors offer subtle and soft selections of blossoming branches and striking vegetables from the market in Trestervere. Large format charcoal drawings add the drama of scale of classical statuary that are ever present in Rome’s environs.
In Wendy Artin’s hand a watercolor wash defines the outline of a sunlit stone column. It reveals the hard edge of floral scrolls of a Corinthian capital and seems to draw them out into three dimensions, as if revealed by the exactitude of Roman daylight. The sepia tone of the wash instills a sense of timelessness, a sense that nothing has changed since we were last there. The ruins, ruined long ago, persevere, even if our own human lives have changed profoundly in the years we were gone. What does it take to endure? The word itself incorporates not the Latin word for strength, but for hardness. Wendy is able to capture the durability of Roman brick, and marble, and travertine revealed by Roman light, it seems, with the flick of a fine brush. How does she do it? The realness of her ruins somehow seems like a trick, a tromp l’oeil.
