Samuel Wade Levy: Recent Works on Paper

Abstract

Samuel Wade Levy:Recent Works on Paper Karen Wilkin Samuel Wade Levy's drawings encapsulate experience. They are almost always done directly from the motif, en plein air, in his studio, or through the studio window. (Very occasionally, a plein air or studio drawing will serve as the starting point for another version or a canvas.) Whether he is dealing with a studio set up, a tree, or a mountain in the American West; whether working with pencil, ink, or color; Levy translates perception into mark-making, concentrating not on faithfully rendering what is before him, but rather on creating relationships among touches on the page that not only animate the surface, but also become a metaphor for what Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse called a "sensation"—the heightened attention demanded by a motif that has, for inexplicable reasons, captured the artist's attention. We recognize and respond to the specifics of the image that Levy has been engaged by, enjoying the complexity and density of a tree's branches or the harsh geometry of bony mountains, revealed by sunlight. But we are equally aware of the physical characteristics of the cumulative pencil strokes or urgent brushmarks before us, conscious of the action of the artist's hand, and even, of the time required for the drawing to reach its current state. Levy allows—encourages—us to think about the history of the drawing's making, providing evidence of all of his interventions on the page, from first to last. We can mentally recapitulate how the evocative image evolved out of the apparently inchoate, spontaneous gestures and smudges that underlie and surround the more lucid, more persistently worked parts. The history of the making of the drawing, with its implications of time passing and gestures repeated, becomes as much a part of its presumed meaning as [End Page 393] its nominal subject. It's as if we were watching Levy at work, following the development of the image before us, as it reached its present state. "Present state" is an operative concept here. Part of the pleasure afforded by many of Levy's drawings is their enlivening instability and contingency: this is what this image looks like now; it looked different in the past and it could look different in the future. We associate this kind of suggestion of the momentary with gestural Abstract Expressionist works, where it often appears to be an end in itself, emblematic of the anxiety and unease that any serious practitioner was supposed to suffer from in the aftermath of World War II and during the Cold War 1950s. Obviously, no such feelings of insecurity are intended or provoked by Levy's works on paper. Quite the contrary, the implied mutability and instability of his gatherings of marks and touches simply animate and enrich his drawings, intensifying our awareness of them as objects made by a particular individual, over a possibly indeterminate period of time. The apparently casual, loose quality of Levy's mark-making heightens the sense that the drawing is coming into being while we watch, lending his work a special kind of intimacy. We can concentrate on the formal and material properties of these lively drawings, at the same time that we can enjoy the vivid sense of place and light they suggest. They make us wonder, as well, whether they might become the sources of canvases at any time, but we rapidly dismiss this thought. Levy's drawings resist being interpreted as studies for works in other mediums. They are vigorous, independent responses to qualities of the light, forms, and textures of the world around us, wholly self-sufficient and complete. [End Page 394] Click for larger view View full resolution Mountain Observation (2018), Graphite and Ink on Paper, 10 3/4" x 8 1/2". © Samuel Wade Levy [End Page 395] Click for larger view View full resolution The Big Pine, no. 3 (2020), Graphite on Paper, 10 1/8" x 7". © Samuel Wade Levy [End Page 396] Click for larger view View full resolution Dark Mountain (2018), Ink on Paper, 7 3/8" x 11". © Samuel Wade Levy [End Page 397] Click for larger view View full resolution...