Artist Statement and Musings
I set off to college in 1966 to be an art major, imagining I’d study figure drawing, do sculpture and draw, draw, draw. I wanted to learn to draw in the classical tradition and eventually paint, figuring it would take years to learn realistic rendering by studying line, relationships, perspective, value, composition and color and copying the great masters.
My first assignment in Art 101 was to go out and collect “junk metal”, roll paint on it, and use it as a stamp. Everything we produced had to be abstract, as realism, we were told in no uncertain terms, was dead. So on my own, outside of class, I drew anatomical studies and copies of the great drawings by the masters, literally hiding the fact from the instructors and my fellow students.
After my sophomore year I dropped out of art figuring I was no good and that I could never be an artist because I couldn't produce modern art or fake it; in fact I didn’t even “get it”. I returned to college less than a year later, and graduated having never taken another art course.
Later in college I met an artist, Jack Werner. We fell in love and married, and while I continued to draw occasionally, I mostly played music while he drew. Without realizing it, I stopped producing art altogether for most of the remainder of our blissful thirty-three years together.
Jack's drawing and the drawing I drew of Jack drawing it 1995
On June 22, 2005 Jack died a sudden and unexpected death. For a year and a half following his death I was a sleepwalker, going through the motions of life, but never inspired by it; I felt no passion and didn’t know what to do with myself.
Barely a year later, my mother passed away and I set about boxing and sorting through her estate while still dealing with my husband's. They were both artists, and my mother especially loved to explore new media.
On New Years Day 2007 I picked up a pencil and began drawing in one of Jack’s unused sketchbooks. I decided to do so because it was an activity that always brought me joy and satisfaction and my love affair with drawing pre-dated my love affair with him. There was no danger of comparing how much more fun this always was with Jack. I had found a safe port for my mind and soul.
As I drew, a feeling of utter peace and calm came over me; I couldn’t stop and I drew oblivious to the passing hours. I sketched the view out my window, then collected a pretty good set of colored pencils amongst Jack’s art supplies and drew a bowl of fruit on my counter. When I finally went to bed I felt elated and woke the next morning with that feeling that something grand had happened; something full of promise like the coming of a child. I'd had an art attack and overnight the fog lifted from my future.
From that point on I set out to give myself the art education I needed. One thing college should teach you is how to learn on your own, how to study, how to research and how to find the resources you need, and that I certainly got that from my educational experience. So while my formal art education may have been truncated, I was able to learn on my own and teach myself.
First, I took half a year to work through all the exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards which improved my drawing immensely. The first excercise, pre-instruction, is to draw a self portrait. In the last exercise you try again.
Pre- and post-instruction self portraits
Since then I have read other books on technique, composition, color theory, art materials, figure drawing, watercolor, pastel and the classical atelier system. I often spend time reading artists’ blogs and other sources on the internet; watching instructional videos on-line, or reading the artists' magazines I subscribe to. Most of all I draw with the goal of making art every day.
By the summer of 2007 I was itching to work in color, so I walked into out my garden one August day to try my hand at watercolor painting. Sitting in the speckled shade of my piece of heaven and having a good excuse to stare at flowers for hours on end as I painted outdoors with my favorite creative music, bird song, I reached nirvana.
From there I tried sketching and painting en plein air any chance I got: trees and views about my home town of Ashfield, MA, buildings and barns, people ice fishing on Ashfield Lake, and playing croquet on the Town Common or frolicking to music during our annual Fall Festival. I carry my sketchbook everywhere; to community meetings, to work, to the dentist.
Each foray into new media was prompted by dealing with the estates of my loved ones. I’d go in to sort and box up my mom's life, and -- well look at that -- there’s a box of crumbling mostly-used Rembrandt pastels. I should try working with them, which I did and it was love at first stroke. I have been blessed to be able to sample any medium that interested me before purchasing it: graphite, charcoal, Conté crayons, pastel, oil pastel, watercolor, colored pencil, and water-soluble colored pencils, and I can often find a sheet of the correct paper for each medium if I dig deep enough. Once I feel certain I want to explore a medium in more depth, I buy a decent set and appropriate paper.
Thank you mom. Thank you Jack.Great joy can come out of suffering. Jack was always supportive of my art the few times we drew together, and nothing gave me more pleasure than to hear him say, “Wow. That’s really good,” because he was a genius. The Great Trade-off is that the artist within would probably never have come out so long as Jack was alive and in my life; seems I had to lose him to gain my art mojo.
So, I have no bio, no long list of exhibits and shows I’ve done because as fate would have it, I didn’t start to dedicate myself to my art until I was 58 and I'm 59 now as I write this.
I am driven by the need to create art that leads the viewer down an honest path to beauty. To make a living from my art would be about as good as it gets I reckon. The time spent earning money is never given back to us; spending it creatively is bliss.
Anna Fessenden 2008