Rocks, Paper, Memory: Wendy Artin’s Watercolor Paintings of Ancient Sculptures

This catalogue documents an exhibition at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of watercolor paintings by American artist Wendy Artin and selected objects from the Museum’s permanent collections.

Wendy Artin has been working for over a decade on a series of watercolors of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and related subjects. She is thus a fresh presence in a long line of artists who draw inspiration from antiquity. Indeed, this tradition has very ancient precedents. The exhibition and catalogue place a selection of 47 of Artin’s paintings–including landscapes and figure paintings as well as images of ancient sculptures–in dialogue with 14 objects drawn from the Kelsey’s collections, among them works of Greek art inspired by Egyptian precedents, examples of Roman imperial portraits that were copied in numerous media for circulation around the empire, and reproductions of the same figure types featured in some of Artin’s paintings (such as Aphrodite Rising from the Sea).

Wendy Artin’s masterful watercolors offer new and arresting ways of looking at ancient sculptures and buildings–and of remembering the classical past.

Includes 81 colour illustrations.