The Drawing Lesson

Trilogy of Remembrance #1

by Mary E. Martin

Magical light creates stunning visions in Alexander Wainwright's landscape paintings. His most recent painting, The Hay Wagon , is a marvelous, moonlit scene, with an old-fashioned hay wagon dominating the foreground, with a beautiful, unearthly glow. Yet, at the pinnacle of his career, he is about to lose his muse. Not everyone appreciates his work. Rinaldo, a conceptual artist, mocks Alexander's bourgeois love of beauty, believing Alexander's success proves that the universe is chaotic and absurd. Determined to undermine, humiliate and ultimately destroy his rival, he defaces Alex's painting. Alexander brushes off the attack, but soon he has a frightening vision of misshapen, human-like creatures. These trolls start appearing in his art, and he is beset by questions. Who are these ugly beings? Has he lost both his light and his art? The creatures lead Alexander to journey from London to Venice and from Toronto to New York as he seeks to understand their meaning. He meets many people, each with a story to tell. Meanwhile, Rinaldo waits in New York City, intent on settling a score in The Drawing Lesson.

Genres: Fiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2010

About the author

I’m a born and bred Torontonian! Almost every culture and language is here. The city affects my writing both as a setting and ways of looking at a world with such immense variety.
Toronto is the setting for my first novel, Conduct in Question, in The Osgoode Trilogy, inspired by my many years of law practice here. Harry Jenkins, the protagonist of the trilogy, seeks love, compassion, forgiveness and a sense of meaning in life, as he outsmarts a serial killer and exposes massive frauds. Fortunately, my practice was far more sedate and my activities were the raising of three children.
After The Osgoode Trilogy, I needed a new hero. Alexander Wainwright, Britain’s finest landscape painter, was born. Do you like to ask yourself the “Big” Questions—the kind which have no answers or too many answers? What’s this universe like? Random? Secret forces at play? What are we supposed to be doing here? You get the idea. I like to throw such questions at Alex to see what he says.
I’ve just published the third novel in The Trilogy of Remembrance. Here’s the question—Can a truly great artist have real love aside from his muse? At first, I thought that might be too esoteric a question. But how many workaholics can’t find or keep love?
When I’m not writing? In 2012, my two gorgeous grandchildren were born. Being a grandparent is the best!
Reading is a huge part of my life, not just fiction but non-fiction in the areas of art, psychology, philosophy, all kinds of literature. Photography is really fun. And, of course, travel is at the top of the list.

Reviews

[Sean Barrs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This type of book is one I would normally not read; I entered the giveaway to try something a little bit different. I was not disappointed with the result but, I do believe, that this book would have been enjoyed by a reader who appreciates this type of genre more than me. I would classify this book as a psychological drama and would refer to this book as being exemplary of the type.

The plot has two opposing forces: modern art and nineteenth century portrait painting. This is represented by two characters: Alexander and Rinaldo. Alexander is the protagonist of the book whom is struggling with his identity. He is a master of his craft but feels that he is a relic of an age past. Rinaldo’s influence affects his painting in the sense that he begins to see Trolls on his canvas. This is to parody the beautiful landscape, by contrasting it with how God would view humans. This idea contradicts Alexander’s ideas of the world and leads him into confusion and increasing blindness. The plot of the book sees him try to regain his sense of self by rediscovering inspiration.

The author’s style of writing allows the reader a very frim understanding of her characters and their daemons. In this we begin to see the psychology of the characters, chiefly Alexander, develop and sometimes waiver as the plot grows. This is an interesting insight into the mind of an artist and how they could conquer the modern artist.

I won this book, here, on goodreads.

[Vonnie Faroqui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Title: The Drawing Lesson
Author: Mary E. Martin
ISBN: 1450229360
Publisher: iUniverse
Reviewer: Vonnie Faroqui for WITS

The Drawing Lesson, by author Mary E. Martin stands among the best of literary fiction. She brings wisdom, grace, and beauty to the page as skillfully as the best painter to the canvas.
Alexander Wainwright has won Britain’s celebrated Turner Prize with a landscape painting of The Hay Wagon. He should be thrilled but the taunting criticism of contemporary and rival artist Rinaldo has thrown him into a soul searching spiral of self doubt.
His beautiful landscapes, once so full of light and presence, begin to fill with creeping, shadowy figures. These troll-like creatures deny understanding and confuse Alex's artistic vision. His muse seems to have left him. A journey to rediscover his passion unfolds as Alex attempts to understand the creatures in his paintings.
The journey carries Alex into contact with a range of interesting characters who all struggle with personal inner demons. Alex touches each of their lives with his spirit and allows each in return to touch his own. The action of the story rises as the consequences of past choices return to entangle Alex in self doubt and recrimination, with the story reaching a climax as Rinaldo sets plans in motion to destroy Alex in a scene of public humiliation.
In the end Alex Wainwright transcends himself and his body of work by illuminating the human form with his divine vision, transfiguring on canvas both his inner and outer demons into beings of luminous spirit.
The Drawing Lesson is a deeply insightful book about life, choices, forgiveness, madness, self doubt, and creative inspiration. Martin has an understanding of humanity, its inner turmoil, needs, and the creative urge that is both honest and compassionate. This is a compelling and moving story to be savored on the palate like fine wine.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Compelling Novel and a Fine Discourse on Contemporary Art

Mary E. Martin understands the craft of writing engrossing novels peopled with credible and fascinating characters, excellent management of varying locations around the world, and management of storylines that are propulsive and challenging in content and technique of development. In addition to writing a solid story in THE DRAWING LESSON she also demonstrates a rather thorough background in the visual arts: the information that drives the story of the artist Alexander Wainwright, a highly regarded representational artist bent on depicting pastoral scenes, and his /nemesis' Rinaldo, a conceptual artist whose driver seems to be not to discredit his rival's career but to challenge him into joining the contemporary times. This is a novel that will please a broad audience - those who love romance novels and those who want to explore the universal discussion of what is art at this particular time in history.

The novel is related by one James, a gallery owner and curator, who is planning a retrospective for the representational painter, the eminent British artist Alexander Wainwright. James favors representational art in his gallery and is pushing for Wainwright to win the Turner Prize in art (which he does) but the other contender for that prize is an artist by the name of Rinaldo whose art is Conceptual (create a dirt trench in a gallery and flank that trench on both sides by red paint (read blood) spattered body parts - a committed statement against war). As an act of `teaching' Wainwright about `growing into the contemporary century' Rinaldo defaces Wainwright's winning painting with a spray can phrase `This is a bomb'. This disturbs the critics and James no end but Wainwright is awakened to the fact that he has been placing dark figures in his paintings (this from a man who never paints the figure) and it is that realization that starts Wainwright on a journey to various places and encounters with different influential characters (including some discovers about his own barely known family) that allow him to alter not only his painting content and style but also his view of the universe.

Martin captures the reader's attention immediately and holds on tightly until the final pages. This is an exceptional book and in her favor it is the first novel in a trilogy referred to as `Remembrance'. She is a fine writer and an informed thinker and her books should find success with both readers and those who are searching for material for screenplays! Read the play RED about Mark Rothko and see if a light doesn't come on.

Grady Harp

[S.P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story about the artist Wainwright, who having won the Turner prize, starts to have a crisis in his art, and goes on a journey around the world (well a bit of Europe and North America) to find his muse once again.

The first thing I really liked about it, was the 19th century feel about it, Wainwright is essentially a 19th century artist, and this makes the era in which it is set also feel of that time. The imposition of the 21st century on the proceedings, is at first jolting, much like the appearance of the conceptual artist Rinaldo and his take on Wainwright's art. So not only a journey through space, but also into modernity, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

Wainwright meets lots of people along his journey, and they come and leave the story as you expect those who you meeting travelling to do. Memories are rekindled and relived, pain and despair is served upon the artist, and his humanity, indeed sanity, is tested.

I liked very much the mixing of the artistic journey, the physical journey, and the personal developmental journey of Wainwright, and all the other characters who seem to be on their own journeys. At times I was not sure to what purpose the journey was for - but I guess that is the point. It is not the destination that matters.

This was a Goodreads Giveway volume. It was very nicely presented, with a letter from the author as well. I like the Goodreads Giveaways as they provide an opportunity to read something that one would not always choose to read - sometimes this results in disappointment, and other times, like on this occasion, something interesting and engaging pops up. Thank you Mary E Martin for the opportunity to read this.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a work of art. The writing is supurb; so much so that I thought I was reading a classical masterpiece. The story deals with artists and their art, good and bad, what inspires them and how that translates into something beautiful. It seemed to me to be a clash between the good and the evil, but the good was so good that it forgave the evil. The good artist seems to have lost his inspiration (muse) and goes on a fast, mad cap, hunt with several other smaller plots weaving themselves into the mix. There are coincidences which often make you ask yourself if the artist is dreaming and he could wake up at any moment. All in all a very satisfying read. If you are totally left brained like myself, be prepared for a new way of looking at things.

[Glenda Bixler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful psychological dramatic mystery...review is on my blog later today... Book Readers Heaven...

[Paul Xylinides · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here the Literary Is Numinous

“If we have a sense of the mystery of life, we know there is far more than just this apparent world. But whatever lies beyond eludes our grasp. We sense its presence, but cannot rationally understand it — much less prove its existence. It teases us at the fringes of our perception.”

Multiple strands weave the tapestry of this book. To draw one of these from the finely woven whole …

The darkest narrative thread in The Drawing Lesson addresses the direction of the arts — specifically visual — that stubbornly persists from the beginnings of the past century. Mary Martin has a quarrel to pick not only with the claims of relevance but also with the assertions of cutting edge significance in so-called modernist art that has grown rather long in the tooth since figures such as Duchamp and the art world of the time proffered a moue to the aesthetic achievements of the ages and, in his case, came up with a soiled urinal, and then a moustache and goatee upon the Mona Lisa in their stead. Today’s touring giant rubber duck represents the perhaps inevitable infantilization of such soulless efforts. A case can, of course, be made that the challenges posed to artists by the incalculable horrors of the previous century could very well have them adopt the foetal position or, taking the human spirit into account, the teenager’s rebellious angst — one of the more enduring cultural achievements both in film and music of these times, not to mention in literary works such as The Catcher In The Rye. On this latter note of the verbal arts, the Biblical flood or plague of vampire and zombie novels would bear witness to the present self-indulgence in the writing world. It would seem that the powers of creation can but quail before a century of holocausts German, genocides Cambodian, Rwandan, and nuclear — to name just a few.
In a world where anything goes, it will happen that some carefully thought out anything might very well hit the mark with lasting force. Witness the Chinese performance artist who covered himself in honey and fish oil. Here I am, he proclaimed to his government, willing to feed these humble flies in this wretched toilet and yet you will do nothing in face of the nation’s millions of female infanticides.
It is something of an irony that the hero of The Drawing Lesson — referred to as “the artist”, whose art is firmly in the traditions of the past (“the Rembrandt light … seems to come from within the painting itself rather than from outside”), wins England’s coveted Turner prize. Work recognizably in the spirit and accomplishment of the eponymous William Turner has of late received little acknowledgment of this kind. Stretched canvas no longer proves worthy of the prize. The artist’s nemesis Rinaldo, whose conceptual work again ironically is apt today to be favoured but in the novel is not — feels himself overlooked for the sake of yet another rehashing of the lyrical and “numinous” — haystacks and sunlight — whose homiletic bias present so-called rational times had long felt to have given the lie to.

“For Rinaldo, only the inner world of the mind, independent of the visual, was worthy of exploration. Wainwright’s winning the Turner was a joke — a slap in the face to all contemporary artists.”

“[He] would have said that those forms, that light meant nothing — they were nothing but the random product of millions of cells dancing a meaningless dance in his brain.”

Rinaldo proves, unexpectedly, to be something of a salvation for the artist who recognizes something in his antagonist’s nihilistic passion that he must deal with in his own life (“the collision of … serenity and horror”) and that his art as well needs to engage for him to move forward.

“Emotion, he thought, is what makes us human.”

Ms. Martin’s bold reintroduction of concepts of the divine and one’s muse into the making of art is a welcome change in our secular times. In the words of the artist,

“‘If you are open and believe that the divine infuses everything in the cosmos, you see this light everywhere and in everything.’”

“‘Some quality, an essence, within the muse is like a candle flickering in the dark, illuminating everything in those rooms.’”

“‘… if you still retain some sense of mystery and imagination, then you are certain there is something beyond this external, dimly perceived world. That is the other. Sometimes you find it in yourself, sometimes in another person, and sometimes just out in our daily world or in a dream.’”

“‘The only proof that it exists is the fact we spend our lives seeking it. It’s that longing, that yearning that is the inspiration for all creativity.’”

One might even detect the nihilistic and the numinous performing a delicate dance within human consciousness:

“… was there any single truth or simply a myriad of individual momentary truths? Perhaps life was only a fragile tissue of conjecture.”

A single experience of the numinous can prove sufficient to guide a life and, eventually, redeem it as comes with the discovery of a few lines written by a recently deceased father who preferred to devote himself to his roses than show an interest in his writer son:

“When I was young, I saw in a dream
A golden castle covered with roses,
Not in the sky, but deep in the woods, here on earth.
It told me the meaning of all life and the universe.
Tears ran down my face — for it was only a glimpse
Which never came again.”

In addition to these metaphysics, Martin can write one hell of an uncomfortable dinner scene, in Venice no less.
It might be argued that Rinaldo is a straw man easily knocked down and that many instances of conceptual art have great significance. While this might be so, it is also true that much of it produces the opposite effect. Today, a used couch found on Craigslist is deemed worthy of exhibition. An artist’s soiled, detritus-strewn bed commands million-dollar figures. These instances plucked from a self-replenishing harvest go far beyond giving pause. In the general public and among many in the arts, eyes roll and stomachs churn. Catch the response on video and submit it to the Turner committee!
The Drawing Lesson accomplishes its push-back against nihilism by having the artist not commit apostasy when faced with his own limitations and not refute personal vision when another’s concept offers little more than a scrawl across its artefact. Instead, he engages and thereby adds another tenet to his quiver — “Only by enraging the status quo could one ever create new art.”

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Drawing Lesson tells the story of landscape artist Alexander Wainwright as he deals with the loss of his artistic vision, slowly regaining it through encounters with a variety of characters. This journey is complicated by an artistic rival with a mission to destroy Alex's work and reputation.

This is probably a 2.5 for me, simply because it turned out to be not one of my favourite genres of fiction, and as such didn't grab me as much as I hoped it would. I prefer plot-driven novels, whereas this book is more a character study of the various people we encounter along with Alexander. I was expecting the emphasis to be on the rivalry between the two artists, which is not the case.

That said, don't let my rating deter you if you are a fan of character-driven novels. The writing was lovely, and the characters are interesting. I quite like that we get snippets of the various characters' lives from their own perspectives, not just as Alex sees them. It's nice to be able to contrast the viewpoints: Alex and how the character inspires him, and the characters' thoughts about themselves. The only real problem I had was that I felt a bit lost regarding the art world. Because of my lack of knowledge about art and the art industry, I felt like I might be missing some of the impact the novel otherwise might have had.


Though I didn't enjoy it as much as others might, I'm definitely glad I read it. Not a bad book by any means; I'm just not certain I'll revisit it very much. For those who enjoy character studies and plots that focus on characters examining themselves, The Drawing Lesson might be a good choice.