Drenth creates his art in the original ‘pochade’ style

When artists draw, they pick up pencils, chalk/charcoals, crayons, pens or brushes and put marks on surfaces. A painter usually uses a brush and a liquid-based medium. Trained artists learn terms accepted across academe as they progress in training.

How you feel about formal terms generally stems from where you are observing.

Most artists continue to learn new terms because we began creating years before formal training begins.

Truly creative people are artists in the plainest terms and not usually comfortable with formal titles.

The same thing goes for using terms that in 2012 American English mean something closer to “stuffiness” or “pretense” than an understood description of what the artist is actually doing to change a blank surface into a creative work of art.

No criticism, but it is comparable to the financially stressed family, which when new money puts it into qualifying for a loan, buys the biggest cars and fanciest homes. Those who finally achieve some status tend to want to flaunt it, as if to say “See, I did do it — I have arrived.”

That mentality crosses the spectrum. Those who do, don’t talk much about it. Those who can’t, talk and talk and talk.

I guess that’s where the old saying comes in that “those who can’t do it, teach it,” whatever “it” is.

As an artist of many years and an art instructor of half that time, I realized years ago I was better doing the work than trying to focus the light on myself.

My take on art was in the doing of it, not knowing the terms used to describe what I was doing, and frequently not even taking credit for having done it.

People who make art, generally do it in private and if self-trained, have no clue that there’s a “proper” term used in the art world to describe what it is that artist been doing with his or her life.

So I was sort of taken aback when a well-known artist from this region began showing a “French method” of painting on TV. Of late, he has been showing “pochade.”

He’s an excellent artist and doesn’t sell painting products (which I respect) in the manner of some TV artists. I had no clue what that term meant, so I looked it up, because that’s what educators do when we don’t know something: we quickly try to learn.

Pochade, according to several online sites and my French dictionary, is a small, color atmospheric painting. A similar, but different term is croquis.

Croquis is a quick sketch from a live model and if a fashion illustration, would show a hint of clothing. Pochade is French for “pocket.”

During Impressionist period it would be called a “plein air” painting from nature. The style of example states pochade was used by Robert Henri and John Constable. In teaching painting, we call that same thing a thumbnail painting or local color draft for a later work usually done off-site.

It was thrilling to learn that what I have done as my reference piece for a later finished painting had such a fine-sounding name.

I now realize I own some original “pochade” and their finished counterparts done by Brock Drenth. They are so fresh and like the Impressionists 120 years ago, they seem to breathe light. And now I know what to call them.

If anyone has an item for this column, please send to Sharon Cox, PO Box 1559, Jamestown, ND 58402-1559.

Tags: sharon cox, diversions