Compassionate Chiaroscuro

 

Compassionate Chiaroscuro

"Noah" by Heather Bullach

"Sheena" by Heather Bullach

"Daniel" by Heather Bullach

"Kaitlyn" by Theresa Clower

"Joshua" by Theresa Clower

"Devin" by Theresa Clower

By Tom Wachunas

 

"I love the quality of pencil. It helps me to get to the core of a thing."  - Andrew Wyeth

"Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see."   Edgar Degas

"Drawing takes time. A line has time in it." -David Hockney

chiar·​oscu·​ro | \ kē-ˌär-ə-ˈskyu̇r-ō : pictorial representation in terms of light and shade without regard to color;  the arrangement or treatment of light and dark parts in a pictorial work of art

 

EXHIBIT: INTO LIGHT - GRAPHITE PORTRAITS OF INDIVIDUALS FROM OHIO WHO HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES DUE TO DRUG ADDICTION /  THROUGH FEBRUARY 12, 2021 /at The Malone Art Gallery (MAG), located inside the east entrance of Malone University’s Johnson Center,  2600 Cleveland Ave, N.W., in Canton, Ohio / Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 4 p.m.   Face masks required.  Read more about the exhibit at :

https://www.malone.edu/gallery-and-exhibits/the-gallery/

   Here are some excerpts from that web page: “The national nonprofit organization INTO LIGHT… is dedicated to reducing the stigma and shame associated with drug addiction through the power of art…The purpose of the INTO LIGHT project is to honor the lives of those who have died from drug addiction in their entirety, rather than defining these lives only by the disease of addiction and their cause of death…Since INTO LIGHT’S founding, exhibits have been curated in Maryland and North Carolina. Each exhibit has 41 entries, one for each person who dies in the U.S. every five hours from drug overdose according to founder and executive director Theresa Clower. …Canton artist Heather Bullach has contributed to Malone’s exhibit by drawing 21 original graphite portraits of individuals from Ohio who have lost their lives to drug addiction. Clower has drawn the other 20. Additionally, INTO LIGHT created a narrative about each loved one that shows them as remembered by their nominator: in darkness and in light.”

   Considering an order of magnitude in art media, graphite (pencil) drawings can sometimes seem to be relatively minor platitudes in the vast spectrum of the spectacular, like so many banal arrangements of marks in gray. But in this pristine gallery, the 41 drawings are mounted as if in a procession imbued with quiet solemnity and reverence, made even more immediate  when you read the sensitively written narratives accompanying each portrait. It’s all a compelling revelation of lives lived, painfully lost, and lovingly remembered.

   In this context, pencil feels perfect. The wonderfully sharp eyes and facile hands of Theresa Clower and Heather Bullach show it to be a flexible and elegant medium, well suited for rendering aliveness in all its complex existential dualities – both subtle and stark, whispered and shouted, fragile and robust, soft and hard, light and dark. Here then is a marvelous confluence of lines, tones and textures, giving form to the ineluctable  chiaroscuro of the human soul.