YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, THE NEW JULY 30, 2000 32 AR A Landscape That Carries a Life's Worth of Emotion the Legal Offices Building Library Maine By DEBORAH WEISGALL A rare exhibition of Hartford, and the other at Coast Artists, a nonprofit gallery Emily Nelligan's Rockport. BRUNSWICK Me. "I used to think that exhibiting MILY NELLIGAN's char- lyrical drawings, all was wrong," Ms. Nelligan said E coal drawings are almost cently. "That art was--" she hest and all the same size: 10 inches of them depicting an tated "--sacred. The buying wide by 7 inches high. Some selling is heartbreaking. Art has Ms. be- are dark as a moonless night, some island off Maine. come nothing but a commodity." pale as fog. They all depict the same Nelligan, 76, is tall, with thick, landscape: Great Cranberry Island, cropped, graying hair and dark gold- and southwest of Mount Desert Island in tions," which continues until Sept. 3, flecked eyes. She speaks softly Maine. Twenty-six of them, reticent is one of the few times Ms. Nelligan, slowly; and, like her drawings, she is and lyrical, ring a galley at the Bow- who has been making drawings for reserved and private. doin College Museum of Art here. In more than 50 years, has permitted Words are the province of her hus- their minimal steel frames, they them to be shown publicly. "I re- band, the artist and illustrator Mar- hang like sudden windows: instants member the first time I saw one of vin Bileck, whom people call Buddy. of light and air translated into black her drawings," said Katy Kline, the He is wiry and energetic and wears a and white. director of the Bowdoin Museum. "It bold pink shirt; he has white hair and At first glance, they might be pho- was during a studio visit with an- a white beard and intense, eager tographs, with their intricate inter- other artist, Lois Dodd, and I remem- eyes. "The drawings are Emily, and play of lights and darks. "Untitled, ber looking up, and hung fairly high Emily is her drawings," he said Cranberry Island, 21 July, 1997" on the wall was a very quiet, very "They are like Emily Dickinson's catches the delicate gradations of soft, dark drawing. I kept looking at poems." gray in a sunset sky, an array of it; it was as if I were hearing a solo In the gallery, surrounded by Ms. clouds almost too subtle to be drawn. cello, and I asked, 'Whose is that?' Nelligan's drawings, with their sure But these drawings also read as ab- Ms. Nelligan's work has long been hand, their brevity and their breath- stractions, the landscape - clouds, a well-kept secret. Meyer Schapiro, taking revelations, this comparison rocks and ocean pared to emotion. Hilton Kramer, Wolf Kahn and Rich- does not sound like hyperbole. It This show, "Littoral Abstrac- ard Pousette-Dart are among those might, however, displease his wife who have collected her drawings, but "I do not talk about my drawings,' Deborah Weisgall's most recent arti- her last two solo exhibitions took she stated flatly. cle for Arts & Leisure was about an place in 1991 in out-of-the-way Theirs is a marriage of under installation by Lee Mingwei at the places, one sponsored by the Con- standing opposites. Mr. Bileck Gardner Museum in Boston. necticut Commission on the Arts, at whose work is meticulous and de- tailed, almost Netherlandish in feel Bowdoin College Museum of Art ing (he illustrated Alfred Kazin's "Untitled, Cranberry Island, 25 October 94 No. 1," a charcoal-on-paper drawing by Emily Nelligan. "Walker in the City" and "Rain Makes Applesauce," a 1965 chil. "AT HOME AND ABROAD: LANDSCAPES AND SEASCAPES dren's book still in print), prefers the Buddy did not like it; it was too with a pencil in one hand and an and grays. Although the works in the BY WILLIAM TROST RICHARDS" gentle hills and intricate ancient austere." eraser in the other. On Cranberry show span nearly two decades, a trees of southern New England to Austerity, though, is central to Ms. Island, Ms. Nelligan and Mr. Bileck drawing made in 1990 compared to August 3 ( October 15, 2000 Cranberry Island. Ms. Nelligan can- Nelligan's work. She was born in work every day, in the morning and one made in 1999 betrays no sense of not draw in Connecticut. "For her New York in 1924. When she was 6 again at twilight. "The clouds are the passing of years, no reference to the woods are claustrophobic," her her father died, soon after he had good today," Mr. Bileck said recent- the events of a lifetime. Each draw- husband said. So they divide the managed finally to land a job at the ly in a phone call from the island. ing is untitled, identified only by the year. height of the Depression. "My father "Emily's still out, but I got too cold. I date on which she made it. icut Ms. Nelligan agreed: "In Connect. did watercolors and worked with in- came back in.' The island light cap- Ms. Nelligan's work is a deeply I force myself to try, but laid wood," Ms. Nelligan said. "I tivates his wife, Mr. Bileck said. it's private dialogue with a particular worth it. I work out of doors, and the not remember him steaming wood to "Cranberry is out to sea. The place is setting; it is also, in its privacy, a atmosphere becomes part of flooded with light.' what bend She always drew, and she took a it." response to the currents of American do." Mr. Bileck has accommodated art. Ms. Nelligan and Mr. Bileck "He's gotten to love the rocks," Nelligan Ms course in art at Washington Irving OME of her most beautiful said, "and the WILLIAM TROST RICHARDS (1833-1905) gnarled, downed trees." High School. Her teacher there which told about Cooper Union, S drawings deal with the fad- lived in New York for years while twisted ing of that light, when color Mr. Bileck taught at Queens College; from "Newport Coast" 1902 Oil on canvas 28x48 inches Signed and dated. lower left Ms. and her leaves the day. "I go until it they were in the thick of things. Cran- Nelligan travel from their husband her graduated in 1944, and where she she her husband. Although she stud- gets dark," Ms. Nelligan said. "Then berry Island has remained a con- An exhibition and sale of nearly 100 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings principally house in from the collection of descendents of the artist - to benefit The Aquidneck Island ern Connecticut northwest. stant far removed from the market- to Land Trust to help preserve open space in the Newport region that inspired the most in June and Cranberry remain through Island met ied painting, "paint was to expensive," use char- I sleep." She works in charcoal on October says, SO she began writing paper and never seals her place of art in postwar America and memorable art of one of the preeminent American painters of the 19th century, They have been going there she first it was a restriction." drawings with a fixative, as if that its capricious fashions. If Ms. Nelli- 1946, when, Ms. Nelligan since coal. "At of would stifle them. She draws favorite WILLIAM VAREIKA FINE ARTS, LTD she thrives on restriction: gan's subject is the moment in its friend wrote that it said, was a But find beautiful medium, of place, of her time places along the shore: ledges, infinite variability, she also draws place, and you could size, of where an erased white halo of surf permanence: a summer place apart THE NEWPORT GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART for a rent not very much place that place. wife did most floods a rock abstracted to a black our first money." to in think house Mr. Bileck said his from chronology, where time is 18TH, 19TH and Early 20th Century paintings, drawings and prints 212 BELLEVUE AVENUE slowly and deliberately, but circle; a spit of land embracing an measured by seasons, tides and NEWPORT, RI 02840 for the summer," she said. "At $100 things drew extremely fast, working inlet's still water, its bands of whites changing light. 401-849-6149 www.vareikafinearts.com wvfa@ids.net she