My routine of posting a new blog on a Wednesday following a Tuesday copiest session at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. was derailed by an ice storm which hit our area hard leaving behind a half inch of ice on top of snow with down trees, limbs, power lines and a host of other problems.  Our power was off for two days forcing me to flee to a warmer shelter and unable to do any work related to art or blog.  We’re just getting back to normal.  Like everyone else feeling the effects of this winter, I’m hoping for better days ahead.

Tuesday, February 4, was day two working with Paul Cezanne’s “Riverbank”.  As one can see from the photo, while it is barely beginning to hum, as my favorite museum guard often says, it is coming along nicely.

Nature was the foundation and inspiration for Cezanne’s art.  He painted with feeling and his own strong emotion.  He had a personal, independent perception of the world which was formed by studying the great masters but always aspiring towards the intense and artless vision of a child.  He searched for his own temperament.  Cezanne asserted that art must strive to be ‘equivalent’ to nature and painted with a series of marks, colors and tones on a canvas that was the realization of his sensations.  As I copy “Riverbank”, my task is to figure out how those marks were made and the meaning behind them.  I discover as I work that Cezanne observed every nuance of light and tone in nature and every time the light changed, he would interpret that light with a different color layered thinly one on top of the other in a very determined fashion.  Copying “Riverbank” requires close observation and much thought and study.

The Gallery has several new and exciting exhibitions.  Let it warm your days viewing beautiful works of art and if you visit on a Tuesday, don’t forget to stop by to see me in gallery #84.  It looks as if I’ll be there for a while before going on to my next copy.