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“Black and Light,” Star Democrat, Easton, Md. April 2, 1993

Artist Captures Play of Light in Monochrome Pencil Drawings

by Dave Williams

Carol Rowan says her art emphasizes the play of light on objects.

Not an unusual statement for an artist -- unless the artist works with black and white graphte drawings, as does the artist, who lived in Centreville for about 3 years before moving to Los Angeles last year. 

Her large drawings of Eastern Shore barns are featured in a new exhibit at the Academy of the Arts. “Barns of the Eastern Shore” opens Thursday with a talk by Rowan and a reception. 

“I only draw in black and white because I’m interested in light,” she said in a telephone interview. “The tones you can get with a pencil to bring out the light is a lot more (effective) if you leave the color out of it.” 

Rowan specializes in finely detailed drawings of buildings, especially historic ones. 

“I’m interested in historic architecture, and it seems the more historic it is, the more detailed it gets,” she said. 

Rowan has been working as an artist for ten years, earning a living at it for the past four years. She is represented by the OK Harris gallery in New York, which she said is the premier gallery in the United States for realistic art. Collectors of her work include Leonard Andrews of Philadelphia, who also owns Andrew Wyeth’s “Helga” collection. 

Currently, Rowan is working on drawings of the Yale Library and of statues at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California. Some of those works will be among the 17 or 18 drawings displayed, said Christopher Brownwell, the Academy’s Executive Director. 

Most of Rowan’s work deals with classic urban architecture, including the Supreme Court building, the National Archives, and universities including Harvard, the University of Virginia, and the University of Pennsylvania. 

Her barn pictures are a departure, not only because of their rural setting, but because they are better preserved than most of the buildings in her work. 

Rowan said most of the architecture she draws is in a state of disrepair, damaged by acid rain, corrosion, or just old age. “I restore things in my drawings,” she said. “I put them back together as they would have originally been. “ 

Such restoration was not needed for the barn paintings. “The barns haven’t changed that much,” she said. 

Rowan’s artistic goal is not to achieve strict realism but to create beauty in a realistic style. 

“I think, for me, detail is really bringing things to life. I’m really interested in making things appear even more real than they are,” she said. “That’s sort of my artistic drive, to make things more beautiful than they really are, more alive than they really are.” 

She said she spends “months” of 8-hour-days on a single drawing, filling in details down to individual blades of grass. 

“It takes a tremendous amount of patience and an exhausting amount of discipline,” she said. 

She said her experience living on the Shore provided inspiration for her art. “I love living on the Eastern Shore. I’m actually thinking about moving back,” she said. “It’s a wonderful place to be an artist. It’s not necessarily a wonderful place to make a living as an artist but it’s a wonderful place to work.”

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