-by Beverley Phillips
It’s hard not to stop and collect a few rocks when walking along the beaches of Inverness County, and Hermine Ford is no different.
Ford is an artist who spends her year between Dunvegan and New York City. She works every day in her downtown New York studio. “Like many artists, I need to do it,” said Ford, “but I’m not a tormented artist. I like doing it.”
Her exhibit entitled From here and from away opened at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts (ICCA) on August 9th. On Sunday, August 16th, she gave an artist talk on her show, which reflects 50 years of drawings and paintings inspired by the rocks she collected from the beach in Dunvegan. “I have a huge collection of them,” said Ford. “My windowsills and bookshelves in New York are filled with them.”
Drawing those pebbles began as a warm-up exercise that Ford discovered she loved. She outlines and then fills them in with crosshatch strokes. “It’s very meditative,” she said.
And though she has been doing them for years, she doesn’t get bored of them. “As long as the form is different and I’m experimenting with colour, it works,” she said. “I’m amusing myself when I do these.”
The larger body of Ford’s work is abstract, and for Ford, the stones are already abstract. “I can identify them as real as a real thing, but I like that they are abstract,” she said.
Yet her drawings are not abstract. “I’m looking at them and drawing them as carefully as I can,” she said.
After the show, Ford spoke on the nature of abstract art. “There is a widespread misunderstanding of what art is,” she said. “People would enjoy it much more if they could see that. People see a Rembrandt, and the reason a Rembrandt is greater than a very able portrait you might find in a thrift shop or from an art student is because of its abstract qualities. The fact that it’s also extremely representational misleads people. Ingres is one of my favourite artists, and he made very pristine portraits. His drawings are incredible. Besides the fact that he’s a great realist, that isn’t what makes the drawings great. His drawings have presence. Where they are on the page, the scale that they are done in, what’s done, what’s left undone. That’s all very abstract, but that’s what makes all of the greats great.”
Her father was an abstract painter, and he would work with a model a couple of days a week. That is where Ford began drawing as a young child. From him, she learned to be very observant. “That’s what I like about the pebbles,” she said. “And I hope it encourages people to pay more attention to the world we live in.”
The show runs until September 6th. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 12:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m. People can visit it at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts at 16080 HWY-19, Inverness.