Sketchbook_Confidential

With the sketch I feel an immediate dialogue back to myself.

William Berra

Living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Berra regularly spots painting possibilities in his daily surroundings, but he also travels abroad for inspiration as often as he can. He experimented briefly with abstract expressionism and nonobjective painting before turning focus to plein-air painting, although Berra now completes many landscapes, his of his oils in the studio. A painter of Impressionistic still life and figures, the Pennsylvania-born artist has appeared in over forty competitions and shows, including group and solo exhibitions.

The opportunity to have an intimate moment with the scene before me inspires me to sketch. Sketching in nature is a very spontaneous experience that grants me the freedom to ignore the rest of the world and concentrate on the image before me.

I sketch when traveling, when investigating a new subject, or when I need to refresh a particular motif that I have worked with in the past. I execute the sketches in a half hour or less in order to retain a quick impression of a particular moment in a particular place: if I spend more time on it, if I labor over it, I lose the fresh joy of the moment.

When sketching, I think only of my immediate surroundings. I am totally engrossed in the subject, the change of the weather and the environment. It is a very refreshing experience, being in the moment.

I try to achieve various objectives in these small, quick works: in some I am working out a composition, in others I am trying to capture the moment's light, in others a color scheme. Each sketch brings a different experience. For example, when executing a sketch of Tiber Island, Rome, the light on the building at that moment was positively iridescent, a mosaic of color. The sketch was devoted to capturing that impression of light: all else was superfluous.

Sketching provides feelings of spontaneity, freedom and exploration. I don't have the pressure of having to produce a finished work, but instead can feel free to concentrate on any aspect or aspects of a subject that interest me at that moment.

I sketch in oil paint, so you can see my signature brushwork in my painted sketches. You have my artist's shorthand. The sketches provide a great springboard for a finished painting. A completed painting may incorporate one or many sketches.

The world provides infinite interest and variety. It's impossible to look at something too closely or too often; you always see something more. Often, a sketching session leads to finding a motif that I didn't expect: I go out looking for a particular subject but find something else. Everything changes: I experience the wonderful surprise of discovering something utterly new.

It's impossible to look at something too closely or too often; you always see something more.

Roberto (Bob) Cardinale

Churches hold a special significance for Cardinale: “The church form speaks to my love of ecclesiastical architecture and springs from my monastic background as a Benedictine monk and my travels.” His sculptures of real and imagined churches, towers and synagogues, many of them commissions, are made of pine and richly painted, average about 16 inches (41cm) tall and require 60 to 90 hours each to make. The Santa Fe artist (originally from Colorado) has made over 400 of them, focusing on the churches in New Mexico, Texas, California and Mexico, and many from the Tuscany region in Italy.