Leonard Baskin and Joe Beeler


November 11, 2018

 LEONARD BASKIN

The thought of the sky and the blue and the surrounding puffy clouds has always been a place where we gaze with certainty of undisturbed beauty, for what else soars there than majestic beings of whom we rely upon as inspiration as we ascend ourselves towards heaven. Baskin’s birds, raptors, paint a different picture altogether of the sky. Eagles, crows, owls and ravens, a predominant feature of his works, are distorted in such a way that they appear to have come out of a nightmare. His black birds are reminiscent of the horrifying moth man. Instead of looking at the sky with reverie, we are urged to turn away and run away from it, as we may become its next prey. But when do we ever listen. The birds themselves are never there, Baskin’s depiction is entirely metaphorical. The birds are subjects of representation of our own ugliness and evil and capabilities for perversion and destruction that relate our inability to escape our confines for even if we ascend we bring with us baggage that we cannot rid ourselves of. 







  
JOE BEELER

Beeler’s sketches are exemplary work that demonstrate the passion and love an artist should have for the development of his craft. The following images are just a few examples of his sketches and were chosen on no particular basis other than to showcase his ability in depicting the human form from various subjects. The first image belongs to chapters of his life devoted to public sketching, he recounts the experience as “I would sketch the people seated around us until I would make them self-conscious or nervous by staring at them.” This has always been the artist’s dilemma when in drawing in a public space, especially when drawing a person, should one ask for permission or should we risk a mildly uncomfortable situation. I found that the latter is the better option, since for the most part you will be met with a no when asking. And the other reason being that the naturalness of the subject is preserved, an important quality reflected in Beeler’s work. When speaking about naturalness I should mentioned that this is accompanied by another imperative feature when drawing subjects and that is character. Turning the pages of Beeler’s sketchbook there is never a doubt in mind that his subjects are not real people. For example, his cowboys never give an impression of not being cowboys or people dressed in cowboy clothing, this is because Beeler draws from real life experience and his subjects always carry a sense of character. Overall, Beeler’s sketches are excellent pieces of art that exist in their own right, and depict a story that sometimes no finished drawing or painting can of the artist. 











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