“Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists …”
— Marcel Proust
Clearly, there aren’t just two options for how an artist can express him or herself, but looking at the work of Laurin McCracken and Cathy Hegman we get an interesting perspective on how artists see and interpret the world differently.
Emulating the Dutch and Flemish still life painters of the 16th and 17th centuries, McCracken takes a realistic approach to his work, using crisp lines to recreate the world in high detail. Hegman takes a distinctly different approach to her figurative work, blurring the lines to represent the world as she sees it.
The focus of a new exhibition, “The World on Paper: The Expressions and Realisms of Cathy Hegman and Laurin McCracken,” the work of these two renowned watercolor artists invites us to explore the ideas of representation and what constitutes reality. By shedding a new light on the seemingly mundane, it challenges us to consider what the world is and what it could be.
“When you really look at their artwork and experience it, though it was created at different times and in different spaces, you realize it is the same – visual interpretations of the world around us,” said Stacey Peralta, Curator of Exhibitions at The MAX in Meridian, Mississippi, where the exhibition will be on display through August 13, 2022.
If your painting style is more like Laurin McCracken’s — or you want it to be — be sure to check out his video workshops, where he takes you step by step through his process.
