Dan Goffman never likes his work. He can see that his drawings are not realistic.
But I’m fascinated by it. Could that be because I’m a modernist. I respond to composition. Realism? Not so much.
Ten years ago Dan Goffman suffered a stroke which resulted in partial paralysis and aphasia. He’s a historian and author with a long scholarly bibliography. Drawing was suggested as therapy and now he draws every day. I have his permission to show and talk about his work. “If I hadn’t had the stroke, I wouldn’t have discovered that I can draw,” he says with wry humor.
What you see in this drawing is far from a depiction of objects on a table. You throw away the realism check-list and instead your eye wanders through this pattern of shapes, textures and negative spaces. Of all the things he could have focused on, he chose these shapes from the still life set up on the table. They sit on the page with an uncanny sense of rightness, balance and economy. Any concern about “realism” or more “detail” would have ruined the drawing. Do we need the three-dimensionality of the oranges and that bowl? No. The ellipse in the upper right corner is enough. Notice how your eye briefly rests there and then keeps moving through the composition.
Drawing by Dan Goffman, graphite on paper, 30” x 22”
https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/reading-a-shape/
https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/how-it-sits-on-the-page/
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 