Barry Moser, Abstract Bookwright

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Barry Moser holds a place among the top tier of the top tier of illustrators. He is one of the foremost living practitioners of wood engraving, an unforgiving medium in which he has developed a style characterized by studied realism and fine attention to detail. But he began his mid-August class at Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts, on quite another topic.

On a piece of newsprint, he made a line drawing of an apple, four times life-size. “What is this?” he asked the class. Someone, suspecting that it was a trick question, ventured, “An apple.”

“[Wrong]. It’s charcoal.” He showed his hand, now dusted black. He pulled the paper off the board and crumpled it. “And this is what it’s worth.”

To drive the point home, he laid a piece of heavy watercolor paper on a table. Using a bedraggled Oriental brush, he moved a puddle of ink around into an abstract design. “I’m letting the brush do what it wants to do.” He splashed some water at it in a few spots, then sponged up the deeper puddles. More ink went down as he studied the results with serious regard. He then reached for a stick of compressed charcoal and reinforced the brush marks with black lines. After 15 minutes of drawing, he deemed it finished, pointing out the variations in value and line weight. He then ripped the paper in quarters and threw it in the bin.

“If I teach you anything this weekend, it is this: do not be precious about your work. Perfection is reserved for God.” He smiled at the class, which was transfixed.

Read the whole essay here.

Franklin Einspruch is the art critic for The New York Sun. He blogs at Artblog.net.


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