Bide One’s Time: Don Bachardy
The wonder of art is that it leaves a visual record of a moment in time, a moment that is captured on canvas or on paper and preserved. If you look carefully at the works of great artists you immediately feel the presence of the subject being presented. It is like a ghost coming to life before your eyes, and you see that person or place as it was at a given moment in time. No matter that the work being viewed was crafted in the year 1389, or 1799, or 1969, or 2005. That it is being viewed reveals a scene from that era.
Faces are unique in any drawing or painting. For instance, look at the faces painted by Gaugain or Van Gogh. The object of the painting has long passed on and vanished, but the ghost remains via way of the face on canvas left behind. If you examine a drawing from the 1800s of a group of people, the scene may still exist but the people have gone and left behind their ghost faces to prosperity.
As I was recently reviewing drawings by noted artists, I again reached the same conclusion: The drawings and art work of American artist Don Bachardy are among the very finest ever created by an American artist. Don Bachardy lives in California.
To study the people Bachardy has drawn is to study America through its changing times. Bachardy’s work is internationally known and respected, and his art has been published in many books. Among his books are the drawing collections found in One Hundred Drawings (1983) and the recent Stars In My Eyes.
A superb artist with an intuitive gift for detail, his works reflect the person and the time the person is presented through the eyes of that person. Although many of his subjects are dead and gone, the lovely ghost of that person is permanently saved in Bachardy’s artistic expression.
Look into the eyes of any person that Don Bachardy has drawn, study the eyes in that particular drawing, and you will come to understand the great talent Bachardy has for capturing the essence of the person he is drawing. He preserves the essence of the person he is drawing for that moment in time, forever.
Don Bachardy is among the finest American artists living and creating. To see what the author looks like and something about his work, please check out the website at: http://secure.projecta.com/bachardy/StoreFront.bok
