Nature studies

Published May 5, 2010 at 8:10 p.m.
New works by Catherine Hamilton and Susan Twaddell
“A bird feeder,” Hamilton writes in her artist statement, “creates an intensified microcosm of the trials and hardships of avian existence.”

A DELICATE TOUCH A detail of Hamilton’s “Squirrel II” (2009).

Catherine Hamilton is a longtime birder. So the New York artist and former RISD teacher’s sharply realistic pen drawing of a flapping owl is based on a bird-banding trip to a preserve in New Paltz, New York. Her soft impressionist watercolor paintings of a red-bellied woodpecker, a black-capped chickadee, and a Carolina wren come from watching the competition among birds for suet and seed at a suburban feeder.

“A bird feeder,” Hamilton writes in her artist statement, “creates an intensified microcosm of the trials and hardships of avian existence. Far from an idyllic peaceable kingdom, the hierarchies and conflicts of a complex avian life are magnified much in the way of urban city living for people.”

There’s no doubting Hamilton’s drawing chops, but there can be a rote bird-guide feeling to her images on view at Craftland Gallery (235 Westminster Street, Providence, through May 22). You don’t feel the tension she speaks of in her statement. These feel more like nature studies, like practicing. What’s missing is drama.

Attention to light and a soft focus lend more drama to her ink drawings of trees, meadows, and rivers illuminated by a mystical sun or moonlight glow.

APPARITION A detail from Hamilton’s “Rabbit” (2009).

These exacting monochromatic drawings bring to mind the dreamy shots of Pictorialist photographers like F. Holland Day, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen from the years bookending the start of the 20th century. They used soft focus to artify their photographs, which were then not considered art, by making them look more akin to the impressionism of painters like James McNeill Whistler.

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