Stone from Delphi
by Wendy Artin
November 1st – November 31st, 2013
Stone From Delphi by Wendy Artin features watercolor paintings inspired by statuary from Antiquity and by the translations and writings of the poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney that were collected in his recently issued, Stone from Delphi. Sixteen of Artin’s paintings accompany Heaney’s poetry in a volume that was published this year by the fine art press Arion Press.
At the recommendation of the American artist Eric Fischl, Wendy Artin was invited by Arion Press to enter into a conversation with Heaney’s writing. Responding visually to a text was a first for Artin. “I never intended to translate Heaney’s extraordinary verse into images,” she says. “Instead, just as his verse was inspired by the myths recounted by the classical beholder, I searched for inspiration in the classical statues representing the mythological characters. My sources were the statues of Antiquity, whose elegant forms breathe with light and shadow, and the spread of pigment- stained water over the page.”
Heaney, who died in August, spent the better part of his life reading, translating, and being influenced by Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and other classical authors; since arriving in Rome 19 years ago, Artin has been immersed in classical ruins and sculpture, observing, painting and refining her understanding of the ancient world with each new cycle of work. Bringing together these two dexterous craftsmen—one in language, the other in paint—made for a memorable pairing.
It also set Artin on a year-long journey of her own: “The images of the statues I had painted and drawn all my life in museums around the world returned to mind,” she explains. “For the book with relish I re-painted, to scale, some of my favorite statues—the Nereid Galatea, the Maenad of the Campidoglio, the Ludovisi Throne Aphrodite. I seized the opportunity to paint statues I had always admired but never quite gotten to—Actaeon, Venus de Milo, the Laocoon as Jupiter in despair. Other characters, such as Charon of the river Styx, were harder to find, and through researching them I found scores of fantastic statues I had yet to paint.”
Artin’s work did not stop when she fulfilled the commission for the Arion Press book, however. “I came across so many enticing subjects while researching imagery for Heaney’s verse,” Artin says, “that I simply had to keep going.”
More Maenads, Aphrodite, Asclepius, Helios and Mars, are just a few of the subjects that Artin has brought to life with this new work. Some watercolors are of book size; others are on a larger scale.
“My goal was to try to find the right balance between heavy and light, strength and fluidity,” Artin says. “I wanted the paintings to be abstract and then click into focus.”
Adele Chatfield-Taylor, President of the American Academy in Rome, said this about Artin’s work: “If the problem of art is to make something alive, in whatever language it takes to be understood, she has succeeded by inventing a language that has classical roots but a visceral immediacy.”
