I stopped in my tracks with a shock of recognition in front of a picture. It was a pastel drawing of a rolling country road with fields, grain silo and a white clapboard house. It is not a notable place, but immediately from there, I knew which way was home. This was a road I had driven often for adolescent pleasure and escape, which made it even stranger to see it years later, like running into a forgotten friend on the other side of the world. You ask each other, “What are you doing here?”
The drawing, Highway TT in Summer, is by Darron Lillian and included in “Pure Pigment,” a joint exhibition with fellow pastel artist Colette Odya Smith. Their works on view at the Museum of Wisconsin Art on the Lake (MOWA) reveal places that may be known to many, but represented with new interest through their drawn flourishes.
Lillian often works onsite and from the interior of his car. He looks for locations that capture his attention for various reasons, appealing to his interest in observing the everyday environment. He seeks something unique in the transitory atmosphere of places often passed by but seldom studied.
While Lillian often dwells on roads and architectural settings, Odya Smith is drawn to nature. Her pastels are influenced by exploration of parks and rivers as well as travels to Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny in France. Pieces such as Full Fade combine an elevated view of a moving stream with rippling blue reflections of sky and subtle shifts in her palette. Her work is rich with color, and though the movement of water is often a part of the composition, they are meditative in their spirit.
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The exhibition text includes a statement from the French Impressionist artist, Edgar Degas, who is known for his inventive and expressive use of pastels. As said by Degas, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” This selection of works by Lillian and Odya Smith takes that notion to heart with compositions that describe a quiet appreciation for the familiar.
Through Oct. 7 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art on the Lake, St. John’s On The Lake, 1800 N. Prospect Ave.
