e sse nt i al arts
Petrichor
On Site
moran-handzlick “No ideas but in things” —William Carlos Williams, “A Sort of a Song”
A Mind of Winter
Every artist has antecedents. The very best of artists understand that a ruthless search for absolute originality will be fruitless. Viewers need a touchstone, a place of entry to begin the dialogue that any successful work of art provokes. “Great artists steal” has become a clichéd notion often ascribed to Picasso or, in modified form, to T. S. Eliot. Conversely, weaker artists often fail to do little more than imitate their betters. But once in a great while, an artist emerges who presents us with a gift of magisterial synthesis. An artist who understands and lives in their present while creating an alchemy of past artistic realizations coupled with a totally modern sensibility. Bethann Moran-Handzlik is an artist for whom the genius of the past finds expression in works of contemporary beauty, grace, and emotional depth. At the last third of the 19th century, a movement of painters emerged in Europe, beginning in France and finding depth of intensity and style in Holland with the Hague School and Scotland with The Glasgow Boys. The best exponent of this was a Frenchman named Jules Bastien-Lepage. Known as the naturalist branch of the realist movement, these artists sought to find emotional,
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