“Black and white study 1”
9x12” watercolor pencil

I do not associate Albert Handell with nudes, or even with figure studies for that matter. Several years ago I had the benefit to attend one of his workshops. For years, like many artists, I’d been following Richard Schmid, and trying in vain, to find a workshop with him. Alas! I read that an oil and pastel painter by the name of Albert Handell would be offering a workshop in Putney, Vermont, and that participants could hang around an extra day to paint en plein air with the famed Richard Schmid. I signed up immediately.

I signed up for the workshop because of Schmid, but my admiration upon my return home, was focused on Albert Handell. This is not to minimize the greatness of Schmid. But there was something so profoundly intellectual about Handell’s approach to his artwork. Many of his incredible landscape paintings border on almost abstract non-representational paintings. I bring this up with the study of my nude, because Handell also does studies that are very accurate. He does studies, however, of trees. I don’t mean simply tree studies; I mean tree portraits. With the same discipline and observation that a great portrait artist might give to the likeness of his/her subject, Handell does tree studies. I find this amazing. I’ve been drawing trees, like many artists, since I was a kid. And if there is ever a place where one might get by drawing something willy-nilly (to fake it, so to speak), trees are it! Not Albert Handell!

I am beginning to believe that all representational artists, regardless of how loose their style, must have it in them, the ability to draw realistically, to observe to the point of obsession. As every respectable painting must have a good abstract underneath it, every respectable abstract painting must have as its base, a solid skeletal structure. I’m still working on this conclusion, so please share with me your thoughts.