Мarc Chagall Mrs. Korobochka’s yard. 1927 Etching. 28 by 38 cm
Some artist's work I go back to again and again and Chagall's work in particular I have found most rewarding. It is the fusion between the awareness of looking that has come from Cézanne via Cubism and the visualisation of the mythic folk traditions of everyday life. Because of their stripped down nature, his etchings are I think easier for me to assimilate, they walk a tightrope between the flickering moments of outer perceptual awareness and the inner visions of memory, a tightrope walk that for myself, ties together interoception with perception, that constant flicker of conscious awareness that lies at the centre of life.
The Garden Beyond Plyushkin's House: From Dead Souls: Etching and drypoint
During the 1920s Chagall made a suite of etchings illustrating scenes from Gogol's 'Dead Souls'. These etchings testify to the vision of a man torn between the folklore and literary tradition of his homeland and the new post Cubist lens of modern art. One image in particular has for myself become a keynote and it has helped me to think through how to potentially reconcile my approach to drawing the landscapes of perception, with my more imaginative reflections of what lies within. 'The Garden Beyond Plyushkin's House', etched and engraved during the period 1924/5, flickers with the scan of looking. The vegetation rises up and literally grows out of the ground behind the house, the house itself broken open to allow the rapture of energy to emerge.
In my own drawings I have many times tried to achieve this sense of nature being looked at and at the same time being visualised as a living, growing entity.
Sketchbook pages
I have also seen this sensibility in the work of other artists such as David Jones and Leonard McComb.
David Jones: Flora in Calix Light.
My grandad's shell case with flowers
Every now and again I try to find a way of drawing the world around me that echoes my own sensitivity to these same issues. An image such as the one above I made from my grandad's shell case, into which I had inserted flowers, was one such attempt to capture the flicker of my own looking, whilst at the same time finding an image that had symbolic force.
Jones and McComb also exhibit an uncertain certainty. Something I have written about in detail before. However, the important issue for myself about Chagall, is that he is also able to embed his interest in a mythic Russia, into his attempts to remind the observer that 'I saw this'. He is able to capture the feeling tone of a memory induced by Gogol's text, and at the same time access it via something that I feel was actually seen in Chagall's youth when he lived in a Russian village. Perception, memory and illustration entwined.
Yelizaveta Vorobey
In 'Dead Souls', the name Yelizaveta Vorobey is brought up by the landowner Sobakevich while he is listing recently deceased serfs to sell to the novel's protagonist, Chichikov, who will in turn try to sell them on to the government. The surname Vorobey translates to "sparrow" and in Chagall's image, she is both a dead soul and a lively old bird. Perception, memory and illustration entwined and imaginatively reinvented through etching; for Chagall, dead peasants are in his mind always very alive.
I have recently been asked to draw illustrations to a children's book. I hope I can like Chagall achieve something that transcends the text and that can stand alone as well as sit alongside the typography. I'm worried about this new venture and wonder how it can enhance what I'm trying to do, hoping that it wont simply be a diversion. But sometimes you just have to try things to see how you respond to them, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I hope what I come up with wont frighten the adults, my idea of a good children's book illustrator being Maurice Sendak and I know that adults tend to view Sendak's works as too dark and frightening, whereas children are enthralled by them. We shall see.
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