The Importance of Infinite Texture

With the drawing that I posted yesterday I posed the question to myself, “Richard, why do you spend so much time texturing and rusticating the paper you draw on? Why not just take a piece of paper and draw on it?” Actually there is not one, but several answers to this question and I will give here the first explanation by way of a story.

Once upon a time there was this artist who lived in a garret in Paris and he decided to do the most detailed and exact painting ever done. He said to himself, “I’ll do a still life, and not only will I paint the color of the wood, but the gloss, and the dust on the wood, and the fingerprints on the dust, and the light as it plays on the very edges of the dust! There was a cello in his painting and after three months of constant work, when he was half way done with the neck of the cello he took a break and and went to look at pictures in a picture gallery.

In the gallery he saw another still life painting, with a guitar in it and the entire guitar was quickly painted with about ten rapid strokes of a fat bristle brush, loaded with paint. It was one of those virtuoso paintings where everything is simple, quick and perfect. Our painter friend looked at it and felt himself go numb. Walking home he declared to himself, “No matter how long I spend on the details of this picture of mine, it will never be as good as that picture I have just seen which has no details at all. And meanwhile I sit holed up in my studio for months and months slaving away, and that painter dashes something off, better than I can ever do and then probably waltzes of to the cafe where he sits having coffee with his artistic friends and talks about art, It just isn’t fair!"

But there in his studio was his painting, sitting in mute judgment of him. He pondered over this problem for many days, and the question, how can a painting with no detail be better than a painting with a lot of minute detail? And then all of a sudden it hit him, the textures in the paint from the brush substitute for the details of reality, and although a painting doesn’t have infinite detail, it does have infinite texture and that is why it is visually satisfying.

And this is the reason that I paint and sandpaper my drawings, so the the image resolves itself down into a satisfying complex visual texture, a very fine grainy surface. Which is a perfect substitute for accumulated detail. Because the slow accumulation of small details is a deadening process, which leads to lifeless pictures.

For, after all, do you really want me to sit there in my studio drawing bricks all day long, and the mortar between the bricks, and the dust collecting on the mortar?

I would really rather be off someplace drinking coffee with my friends and talking about art.

This drawing is a view of buildings as seen passing through downtown Boston by car, done with charcoal on prepared paper. It measures 12.5” x 8” and is signed with an R on the front, and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell

Driving into Boston on Storrow Drive

I was born in Utica, New York, and when I was growing up the New York State Thruway was being built. I think that my first experience of landscape, especially urban landscape comes from traveling on the thruway. The Interstate roads give us very special, unique views which I have always been very affected by. I especially like the views of older architecture, and big complex neighborhoods, when seen from an elevated highway such as this view of brownstones along Starro drive, traveling into the heart of Boston.

This drawing was done with a black wax pencil on a heavy cold press watercolor paper that was first painted brick red, then lemon yellow and then off white, or perhaps it’s the other way round..........yes,............. I’m sorry but on closer examination I see that the lemon yellow went on after the off white. When the various coats of paint were dry I sandpapered the surface so that the white breaks through the yellow all over the place and this subtle tonal variation can be seen in the scan. You might want to ask me, “Richard, why do you complicate your life and your drawings with all this technical mumbo jumbo, why not just take some ordinary paper and do a drawing?”

This is a really good question and I’m going to try and answer it when I post a drawing tomorrow on ebay. That way I’ll have time to think of a good answer.

This drawing measures 4.5” x 12” and is signed with an R on the bottom front and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell, June 23, 2001.