Two Sketches: Woman in a Tiara and Profile of a Woman

Woman in a Tiara
(c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper

     A golden tiara – resembling the diadems of Ancient Greece - ornaments the head of the lady in this first sketch.  The next drawing shows a lady with spiraling, fly-away curls and a light necklace of pearls trailing along her neck as she turns in profile.

   These two drawings are part of my special “sketchbook series”.  Their clear lines, a black pen following across a light sketch in pencil, make the portraits of women you will see from this procession of pictures; ladies with lively or tranquil faces, fashionable hairstyles and hats, and a sense of poise or grace.  It is a daily story, told with a pen and very occasionally with a line of charcoal; please enjoy the visual words that create their identities and expressions.

Sarah Myers

Woman in Profile
(c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper

 If you are interested in buying a picture from this series, please contact me on my website:

https://www.sarahmyersart.com/contact/

Two Sketches: Woman with Crown of Leaves, Woman with Braided Hair

Crown of Spring Leaves
(c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper

    A classical, almost Renaissance touch for today.  A woman with a wreath of spring leaves and another with a crown of braids encircling her head.

  These two drawings are part of my special “sketchbook series”.  Their clear lines, a black pen following across a light sketch in pencil, make the portraits of women you will see from this procession of pictures; ladies with lively or tranquil faces, fashionable hairstyles and hats, and a sense of poise or grace.  It is a daily story, told with a pen and very occasionally with a line of charcoal; please enjoy the visual words that create their identities and expressions.

Sarah Myers

Woman with Braided Hair
(c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper

If you are interested in buying a picture from this series, please contact me on my website:

https://www.sarahmyersart.com/contact/

Two Sketches: Woman with Flowing Hair and a Lady in Lace

Woman with Flowing Hair
 (c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper

     A woman with flowing locks of hair gazes wistfully out at us; and another, in graceful profile, shows the delicate lace of the collar or shawl wrapping her shoulders.
   These two drawings are part of my special “sketchbook series”.  Their clear lines, a black pen following across a light sketch in pencil, make the portraits of women you will see from this procession of pictures; ladies with lively or tranquil faces, fashionable hairstyles and hats, and a sense of poise or grace.  It is a daily story, told with a pen and very occasionally with a line of charcoal; please enjoy the visual words that create their identities and expressions.

Sarah Myers

Lady in Lace
(c) Sarah Myers 2020
Pen on paper.

  If you are interested in buying a picture from this series, please contact me on my website:

https://www.sarahmyersart.com/contact/

The Orange Flower - Painting by Sarah Myers

The Orange Flower, Sarah Myers.  Acrylic on canvas, 2020.

She turns toward us, but her dark eyes remain averted; the expression of her scarlet mouth and her downward glance shows she is deep in her own thoughts. The bloom in her hair flares like a torch against the rich blue of the background. Painted 2020, acrylic on canvas.

The Orange Flower, detail.  Sarah Myers, 2020.

The Orange Flower, Sarah Myers, 2020.  Detail of flower.

The Orange Flower.  Close-up.  Sarah Myers, 2020.

The Pink Toque - Painting by Sarah Myers

The Pink Toque, Sarah Myers
2019

   She faces us directly, her eyes sparkling like the rich jewellery ornamenting her sinuous neck. A large aqua-green collar wraps her warmly and a pink satin toque hat sits perched elegantly on her head. The canvas, even with its deep, intense red, recedes from woman's poised presence, her confidence filling the entire picture. This work was painted toward the end of 2019.

The Pink Toque, detail of face.  Sarah Myers.

The Pink Toque, detail of necklace.  Sarah Myers.

The Pink Toque.  Close-up of face.  Sarah Myers, 2019

The Pink Toque, detail of mouth.  Sarah Myers.

The Pink Toque, detail of eyes.  Sarah Myers.

The Green Flower - Painting by Sarah Myers

The Green Flower, Sarah Myers
Acrylic on canvas, 2019

She glances downward gently, lips smiling at some pleasant, quiet thought.  Long, simple lines form the shapes, head elegantly poised on the neck with its graceful curve.  At the top, a little burst of acid-green marks the bloom she wears pinned in her hair, a bright hue which stops and accentuates the lengthy contours creating the rest of the image.  She is surrounded by a warm atmosphere of rose-pink and vibrant orange bordering on brown.  Behind her, blue shades toward the realm of purple and lilac.  Acrylic on canvas, 2019.

The Green Flower, Sarah Myers, detail of face.

The Green Flower, Sarah Myers, detail of flower.

The Green Flower, Sarah Myers, detail.

Sidewards Glance - Painting by Sarah Myers

Sidewards Glance, Sarah Myers.  Acrylic on canvas, 2019.

The dashing sweep of her hat darts in same direction as her eyes… Black, red, blue all rush across the canvas of the first painting in my newest series of artworks. Simple, rapid brush strokes define the face with its sideways glance and slightly parted, slightly smiling lips. A wider range of play from a larger brush, loaded with rich, intense black, gives the rough outline of the hat. Yellow-orange and even metallic gold speak from time to time to detail the woman's lively expression or the edges of her stylish headgear. November 2019.

Sidewards Glance, Sarah Myers.  Detail.

Sidewards Glance.  Detail.  Sarah Myers.

Two Ladies and Sky - Drawings by Sarah Myers

Lady with a Flock of Sparrows, Sarah Myers
Charcoal on paper, 2019

A lady with a flock of sparrows fluttering in the air behind her, the whirl of their wings echoing the spiral of the long ringlets trailing down her shoulder… and a woman staring earnestly out at us from a background filled with climbing, billowing clouds which mirror her bouffant bows, her frills and edges of lace. These two drawings are part of a recent collection of artwork in charcoal, sketched with simple lines across large sheets of paper. The darker, stronger charcoal contours follow paler pencil lines which form the preparatory stage.

I am happy to finally return to my blog – after a long and very unintended absence – and to post these two sketches here.

Woman with Clouds, Sarah Myers
Drawing in charcoal, 2019

Lady with Sparrows, detail of face.
Sarah Myers

Woman with Clouds, Sarah Myers
Detail of face

Lady with Sparrows, detail of birds.
Sarah Myers

Woman with Clouds, detail
Sarah Myers

Eris with the Apple of Discord - Sculpture by Sarah Myers

Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers

Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers
2018, terracotta

     The precious fruit poised in her hand, she turns, watching for her moment; heavy cloak clutched tightly across her side but right arm lightly lifted to aim. Her eyes glow with a sudden spark…
    In Greek legend, Eris – Discord – stirred by mischief, secretly brings a golden apple inscribed “To the Fairest” with her to a wedding feast on Mount Olympus, and, at the height of the revels, tosses it into the midst of the celebrating deities. The treasure, claimed and counter-claimed by the most powerful goddesses of the Grecian theogony, causes a quarrel which wreaks havoc on the serenity of the divine abode, and this squabble in its turn causes the grief and pain of the Trojan War among mortals far below.
    I have never been able to feel that the gravity of the results could place a greater responsibility Eris than on the other mightier beings that took the conflict so much farther; and her playful objectivity (after all, the apple could have remained hers) gives a certain sympathy to her place in the myth. So I chose this subject in spite of its mischievous, almost militant, nature, as I saw in it the possibility to capture a form I've long wanted to investigate; a sculptural moment that is both the height of action and a point of stillness and suspended motion. Her hand is just at that transition where the impetus will be imparted to the fruit, which will fly from her a fraction of a second later; and in the expression of her wide eyes and slightly parted lips, you can see her thoughts as she both anticipates the result of her deed and already sees it completed in her mind.
    And there is in this sculpture simply the abrupt glimpse of action conceived and taken, perhaps if abstracted into that one fragment of time, a thing that held the good of its own movement and beauty.

Eris, Sarah Myers
detail from below

Eris with the Apple of Discord
impressionistic detail of hand

Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers
sculpture from back

Eris, Sarah Myers
detail of face

Eris with the Apple of Discord, Sarah Myers
Sculpture in terracotta

The Cranach Hat - Sculpture by Sarah Myers

The Cranach Hat, Sarah Myers
Contemporary Sculpture in terracotta

    She tilts her head gently to the side, counterbalancing the elaborate flare of her velvet hat. Around her neck cling rich Renaissance jewels; the top of her bodice is embroidered with a scrolling pattern of stylized leaves and stems; a few stray locks of hair escape from her ornate headgear, which is also beaded and jeweled. Her sidelong glance is thoughtful and bright but almost wistful.

     My most recent sculpture was inspired, as its name implies, by the paintings of a great sixteenth-century painter, Lucas Cranach the elder. His vital, energetic but opulent portrayals struck me as perfect source material for a portrait like this one, created in a vivid red-orange terracotta at about half life-scale.

The Cranach Hat, Sarah Myers
Close-up

The Cranach Hat, Sarah Myers
Detail 

The Cranach Hat, Sculpture by Sarah Myers

The Cranach Hat, detail
Sarah Myers

The Cranach Hat, Sarah Myers

Ladies with Birds, Two Drawings - Sarah Myers

Cherries, Sarah Myers
Minimal line-drawing in charcoal.

    Two drawings show a woman with a swallow and cherries, another lady with a dove and an orange. We might be tempted to think that the swallow was begging for fruit, but if you can see a speck in the air overhead you will understand he is actually looking to catch the little fly that is the winged thing in pursuit of the cherries. And the dove in the next picture is a friendly visitor flying into land, perhaps on the outstretched hand, perhaps on the shoulder. From my collection of line-drawings in charcoal.

Woman with Dove and Orange, Sarah Myers
Minimal line-drawing in charcoal.

Head of a Woman - Sculpture by Sarah Myers

Head of a Woman, Sarah Myers

     Sometimes an artwork contains more than its creative or intellectual history - as in this sculpture, where a wholly unexpected event, an explosion in the kiln, left marks unintended in the original form. It still seems odd to think of so tranquil a personage flying apart while surrounded by white-hot coils three times the temperature of a baking-oven; but such was the case.
     As she now stands she is not only the outcome of creation and catastrophe but also some gentle remedying. Several days ago I placed the two largest pieces back together as best I could. Though some chips and ceramic splinters remain missing, as they had pulverized, she now appears much as she was first intended; a peaceful, heart-shaped face, the tilted head poised on a long, graceful neck. Half-classical, half modern; and now, with the fracture lines of her mishap - where no mending could conceal the warp produced by a fire of 1260 degrees celsius – perhaps a little post-modern as well.

Head of a Woman, Sarah Myers
Front, close-up

Head of a Woman, Sarah Myers
Sculpture in stoneware

Head of a Woman, detail.  Sarah Myers 

Head of a Woman, sculpture
Sarah Myers

Head of a Woman, Sarah Myers