  |
The Play of Light and Shadow
By Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritus Achenbach Foundation
for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
An example of an old and nearly forgotten medium that has been
adapted by the artist Holly Downing to her contemporary aesthetic
sensibilities is the mezzotint. It is the most difficult of all
graphic art processes but also the one that yields the most
luxurious results.
For over thirty-five years, Holly Downing has been an artistic stage
manager directing the play of light and shadow over what she feels
worthy of transforming from the seemingly ordinary in life into the
extraordinary, through the subtlety of her art. Being a
representational artist has not limited Downing. In fact, her
relative choices of seemingly simple subjects has allowed her to
work moods and meanings into the commonplace that would be lost if
her art had to compete with more grandiose or distracting subject
matter. An artist one could compare her to is the masterful yet
humble Italian, Giorgio Morandi.
After studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Downing
pursued research on the mezzotint in the U.K. with a National
Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. It led to meeting an elderly
mezzotint engraver, Lawrence Josset, who once studied with the
virtuoso printmaker Sir Frank Short. Through Josset, she was able to
learn many of the refined techniques of the medium. Mezzotints have
had a co-equal status with Downing’s paintings and drawings
throughout her career, and, in fact, seem to inform her paintings -
pushing their chiaroscuro tonalities and increasingly strong and
distilled compositions, stripped of unnecessary detail. Time and
patience are as crucial as inspiration and energy in the creation of
mezzotints. Downing has written, “This extraordinary time consuming
process, while laborious to some, is meditative and highly
satisfying to me. Using only the pressure of my hand on the scraping
tool, I can imbue simple still life objects….with a reserved
strength and beauty that I obtain in no other medium. Light and
shadow have the power to transform the seemingly immutable.
Somewhere along the way psychological states of mind reveal
themselves, and outer and inner worlds connect.” 7
There is a beautiful
consistency in Downing’s choice of subject matter that is true
regardless of medium. Holly Downing is an artist of her time
employing the painstaking methods of another era. Her clarity is a
welcome respite from the visual chaos that surrounds us. Her art is
an environment of implied human activity yet containing a deChirico-like
sense of absence and loss. Through the intelligence of her art, we
are encouraged to appreciate the beauty in the commonplace, not just
in her art, but in the world around us. Holly Downing has given
value to all the time that went into her work and, in turn, has
enriched the lives of those that still know how to see.
Robert Flynn
Johnson
Curator Emeritus Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Excerpt, 2008
|
|
