As part of Master Drawings New York 2014, Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art will present 20 digital drawings created on the iPad by Mexican painter and muralist Elena Climent. Output as giclée prints, the works will be mounted side by side with actual iPads showing the step-by-step progression of the drawings from first outline to completed work. Climent, who is interested in the link between traditional methods of drawing and electronic drawing in the 21st Century, compares the ability of the iPad “Zoom” feature to show details not visible to the naked eye with Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura to investigate tiny visual details he later included in his paintings – details that can only be seen using a magnifying glass.
When making art on an iPad, you are creating a pure image with no physical weight or texture or temperature. You are not mixing colors on a palette until you find the exact hue; you are not thinning the paint with turpentine to make it more transparent; you are not interacting with the behavior of the surface, whether canvas, paper, wood, tin or any other. There is no drying time, no humidity factor, no cracking. Creating art on an iPad or computer is the closest I have ever felt to drawing or painting directly from my mind. I look, I think, I decide what color I want and I make it happen on the screen. I have learned to mix colors in my brain. My experience with iPad art has taught me that even something as seemingly cold, industrial and impersonal as a computer screen can become intimate, personal and poetic.
Elena Climent
Works on View
