Wendy Artin is an American painter. She primarily works in watercolor and charcoal. Her work is figurative and classical and explores the timeless interaction of light with surfaces on architecture and the human body.
Artin grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, where she climbed trees, walked on her hands, rode a unicycle, and drew constantly. As a child and young adult she spent a great deal of time traveling and living abroad, sketching in streets, cafés, museums. She met her husband, Bruno Boschin, when her travels took her to Italy and into his bookstore, the Libreria del Viaggiatore (The Bookshop of the Traveller), in Rome.
On March 7, 2023, The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) announced that Artin was the 2023 winner of the Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition in FINE ARTS.
Artwork
FIGURES:
Wendy Artin, Tamara Touching Toes, 2002
Artin is best known for loose expressive sanguine watercolors of the live model, through which she explores absence, beauty and the corporeal. As poet Jessica Fisher writes in the catalogue of the exhibition Roman Studio: “The viewer is drawn into the process of making as she or he chooses where to read form, where negative space; our desire completes the dance begun by the brush and its liquid medium.”
In 2012 upon the recommendation of artist Eric Fischl, Artin was invited to create a series of watercolor paintings from Greek and Roman statues of mythological figures to accompany Seamus Heaney's classically themed poems in the book Stone from Delphi, by Arion Press.
ROME:
Wendy Artin, Temple of Saturn with Pines, 2018
The Mediterranean light on the iconic ruins and parasol pines of Rome are a recurring theme in Artin’s painting. Architectural historian Adele Chatfield-Taylor writes, “Being in Rome slows us all down, turns us all into painters… Wendy takes the same views that attract us all--the umbrella pine, the solitary column, the river god--and turns them into images we recognize but feel we have never really seen before. They are familiar but alive, fresh, and inevitable.”
These paintings are nostalgic and often calligraphic, as writes Alexander Purves, “This inert marble is so filled with light, with life, with memory, that we are made to forget that, in the end, these are just stains on a piece of paper made by the strokes of a brush.”
WALLS:
Wendy Artin, Marilyn Wall New York City, 2017
During the years prior to settling in Rome, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Artin traveled extensively and painted many views of city walls and vehicles. These colorful paintings show her virtuoso skill and the great versatility of watercolor, recreating rusty stains and graffiti, depicting photographic posters and washy walls. Her exhibition in Boston entitled “Here Today” was a tribute to the random beauty of self-expression and urban grit around the world.
STILL LIFES:
Wendy Artin, Pineapple Guava branch, 2020
Artin is also an ardent appreciator of food and plants, the subject matter of her 2020 exhibition Lush: Flora e Fauna dalla Quarantena. As organic farmer of Orto Vulcanico La Lupa Jonathan Nossiter writes, “What is animate?”, Wendy Artin seems to ask us. What is solid matter and what is liquid? If an inanimate sculpture can be turned to vibrant flesh by her magic hand why can’t organic matter, in its turn, acquire the epic, mineral dimension of sculpture?
Formation
Artin's first important teacher was artist Jean Patiky, a vivacious young art teacher at Hyde School in Newton Highlands, then called Jeannie Kornblue. A brilliant teacher, Jeannie had the first graders drawing and painting from life, from imagination, even carving linoleum blocks. When Artin brought home a careful magic marker contour drawing she had made of her sneaker, she was indignant that her parents thought it was the work of Miss Kornblue.
During her five years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Artin drew in the life drawing studios of Miroslav Antic, Lou Gippetti, Henry Schwartz, Andy Serbick, Tim Nichols, Bill Flynn.
From the Roman Studio, 2015, catalogue with preface, Being in Time, by Jessica Fisher, Gurari Collections, Boston
Rocks, Paper, Memory: Wendy Artin's Watercolor Paintings of Ancient Sculptures, 2015, catalogue with discussion between curator Christopher Ratté and Wendy Artin, Kelsey Museum, Michigan
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