After several years of email correspondence with artist Lynn Pauley, we finally met last fall, in class. Lynn was guest artist at Anastasia Aukeman’s foundation year seminar at Parsons The New School of Design. After a rousing introduction to her way of drawing on location, the class headed to the High Line for total immersion [more].  With the DART Summer Invitational now on the horizon, and the theme, “Ask an Artist: Why Draw?”, I asked Lynn to share her thoughts on the subject:

I just moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania to become an Associate Professor in Illustration at Marywood University. After I unpacked my boxes I realized that 90 percent of the books were sketchbooks or journals or a combination of the two. Almost two hundred volumes of fifty to 100 pages each.

I started writing in a journal when I was sixteen. I had a voice and a need to be heard and being the middle child of a loud, funny family, no one was really listening to me. The sketchbook was a great place to record how I felt what I saw in my world around me.

A sketchbook and a journal are a great place to be raw, authentic and real without judgment and critiques from the outside world. They are private and portable. Almost immediately my written journals became sketchbooks and then they separated into books just for writing and books just for drawing. All of this has come full circle as you will now see these 'books' crammed full with notes, daily journal entries, collages, mixed media, paintings, pasted pages drawings and found items.

Studio photos, above and top, by Sue Jenkins.

I don't sketch, I draw. Sketching for me is trying to draw. I draw all the time, almost every day. I can't explain it; it is a deep yearning; a need to document and make a portrait of place. It is a record of everyday life, people, place and thing. Some people call it an obsession; I prefer the word passion. I agree with Fairfield Porter's words; I am making 'the ordinary extraordinary' by picking it as content to draw.

Above: Two spreads from the Coney Island sketchbook.

The sketchbooks themselves have been a variety of shapes and sizes. I prefer a heavier 90-110 lb paper but I can tell you I have tried every sketchbook on the market. Lately I have been experimenting with taking small booklets or catalogs that come in the mail. I'll gesso out the photos and type and draw over them. There is something thrilling about wrecking a pre-printed booklet and making it one's own. I pre-ground about ten pages in the sketchbook with a large brush and acrylic paint and if I have already scouted the location or know the subject matter I will abstractly ground in the entire page loosely with 4-5 large areas of color. 

Above left, initial drawing over color ground. Right, portrait with brochure typography background.

I am influenced by the Bay Area figurative painters. in particular Richard Diebenkorn and David Park. Diebenkorn's figure drawings of the fifties hold a raw black line that shifts and contours adding black value and patterning to the live model. The sureness of his mark attracted me and I felt confident I could make marks in my own hand in the same way. From Park I learned you could draw in pencil or chalk on site and then from memory add the color later on. This was a crucial turning point for the work as I could then draw freely on site using limited dry materials while finishing in full color of my choosing at night and inside.

Above: Spread from the Ridley Carwash sketchbook.

The illustrator Robert Weaver taught me how to memorize, see and draw moving objects and people. His theory was that each person will circle through a series of 4 to 5 personal gestures before leaving a space. You can test his theory on any subway or while watching a group of people in a room. Weaver's theory coincides with Diebenkorn's theory that as you are waiting for the figure to return to its original gesture you draw in everything around it. Essentially this makes the negative space important, activates the picture plane and makes the entire picture plane a positive space.

A few things have happened and I have observed and recorded it all from life. So though these sketchbooks started out as visual descriptions of locations I've lived, people I've known or met, they've ended up being a portrait of my life.

Come by, I'll show you........:+)

 
Spread from the Lee, Massachusetts sketchbook.

Lynn Pauley earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, BFA  from Syracuse University, and an Art Education degree from the Parsons School of Design. She has taught innovative, cross-disciplinary on-site illustration classes both here and abroad since 1989. From 2006 to 2008 Pauley was Chair of the Illustration program at New Hampshire Institute of Art. She has been an instructor at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, F.I.T. and the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

She has been a frequent lecturer and instructor in illustration and on the subjects of, work ethic, craft and personal voice.

Pauley's corporate campaigns include illustrations for the Broadway production of Superior Donuts, the NY Jets, and large-scale installations for the Orlando Convention Center, as well as four murals for the Robin Hood Foundation Library Initiative. Her editorial work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Ladies Home Journal, Allure  and Jane Magazine  to name a few. She chronicled the events of the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, The Masters Tournament for Sports Illustrated as well as the events of 9/11 for Print  magazine. These words and pictures can be viewed in their entirety here.

Lynn Pauley currently lives and works in Scranton, PA where she has been named the new Associate Professor and Area Coordinator in Illustration at Marywood University   [blog].

Her latest series of large-scale figurative work will be exhibited next year. When not in the United States, Lynn Pauley lives and works in Auvillar, France. Lynn Pauley in DART.

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