Alexander Purves

Watercolors
Alexander Purves Watercolors
Alexander Purves
Watercolors
Essay by Ruth Miller

This publication accompanies an exhibition

at the Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University
October 9 to December 18, 2017
Dedicated to Drika Agnew Purves
February 2, 1940 – September 19, 2017

Exhibition open by invitation or appointment; call 203-432-8227

Copyright © 2017 by Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University.
All rights reserved.

ISBN 0-9767908-9-0
Foreword

One might expect an architect to draw, and indeed, Professor Alexander

Purves studied drawing with Josef Albers as a Yale undergraduate. For
fourteen years he has taught an intensive four-week drawing seminar, in
Rome, for graduate students of the Yale School of Architecture (with his
colleague Stephen Harby). In Purves’s view, drawing is a critical skill
for an architect: “If you really want to see a building, you should draw
it. Drawing forces you to look — and to look with precision and with a
sense of inquiry.” For most of us, drawing and watercolor would seem
to be very different arts and require somewhat different skills. However,
I suspect that Alec sees a rock formation in his watercolor in a way not
so dissimilar from the building he sees in his drawing; that is, he sees
it with the eye of an architect. In any case, it is my expectation that as
we live with his watercolor exhibition in the Koerner Center this fall
and hear him talk about his art, we will gain a deeper understanding
of how this architect perceives form and color. I want to thank Alec for
sharing his art, Ruth Miller for her essay for the catalogue, David Baker
for editing, Chika Ota for design, GHP for preparing the images and
printing the catalogue, and John Gambell for overall management of the
catalogue production.

Gary L. Haller, Director

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Rock Reclining 2005 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
The Watercolors of Alexander Purves

I’ve long admired the accomplished watercolors of Alexander Purves,

and over the years my appreciation has continued to grow, together
with my pleasure and gratitude for the valuable lessons they bring.
They are thoughtful, contemplative, modest, sensitive, generous,
and knowledgeable, as is the man. Alec is an architect, in my mind a
modern-day John Ruskin. He is an esteemed teacher as well as a master
of the medium of watercolor.

Watercolor is a medium which has been labeled as a difficult one, but in

Alec’s hands it behaves brilliantly — and with such apparent ease that
one is convinced that it is perhaps the most manageable medium.

Architecture, the mother of all of the arts, I imagine to be the most

challenging and difficult of human endeavors. I think of Alec’s
watercolors in this way. They are like a form of flat architecture — the role
the parts play to the whole, the sense of scale, the awareness of light, the
measured development of his form, the order and timing of how all of
these components build a space, both interior and exterior.

One thinks of Cézanne’s late watercolors, or Morandi’s drawings, when

considering Alec’s use of the white of the paper. His method makes one
think of stone that is carved or how an architect uses space. The white of
the paper is often volume. It is like a foundation, a surface to build from.
The white of the paper becomes one of the most active ingredients of the
work, not a passive surface to fill, but an active foundation.

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I think of his thickets, rocks, rivers and forests, palm trees and
ferns — motifs and places he loves and returns to over and over, finding
form, light, and order. He brings forth their unique characters. Forms
become concrete. In the best of his work a kind of alchemy happens,
joining his vision and medium to his subject, expressing perfect balance,
harmony, and order.

I especially like the rocks and the thickets. I feel that when he’s
painting and looking at brambles from his studio window, they are so
complicated that he’s having to explain to himself how he is seeing
them, not only what he is seeing. They become more abstract and free
because of this. What often happens when someone comes to painting
from another discipline is that they approach making painting with
technique alone. They miss the point. They are putting down, naming
what they are seeing, lost in the specifics of subject and detail, not
involved in the contemplative thing of how they are seeing. And this is
why I admire Alec’s work most of all.

Ruth Miller
Washington Depot, Connecticut
August 3, 2017

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About These Pictures

My watercolors are made from direct observation. The subjects are

drawn from the natural world — not the grand epic view, but rather the
modest story found close at hand. These subjects — rocks, brambles,
woods — are commonplace, but they are incomparably rich. Taking time
to observe closely reveals endless patterns, textures, miniature worlds.
It may be that many hours spent as a child transfixed by the tide pools
on the rocks in Maine encouraged my fascination with the small and the
overlooked.

For forty years Drika and I spent part of each summer on a small island
in the St. Lawrence River. The water and the weather were a constant
fascination, but what truly intrigued me was an outcropping of rock in
the center of the island. One formation in particular held me fast. Over
the years I must have painted the same rocks hundreds of times. They
became good friends — reflecting many moods. At a certain distance one
sees a composition of masses (Tumble); closer one begins to see these
forms differently — perhaps hard, perhaps soft (Rock Reclining); closer
still one can scan the surface — the delicate changes of plane — and scale
becomes ambiguous — almost abstract (Crease).

Ruskin, in his Elements of Drawing, prescribes the following exercise. To

draw the overlapping branches of a tree, do not draw the branch. Rather
draw the shapes of the negative spaces between them — and only those
shapes. It is an excruciating exercise, as the slightest error will render
the entire drawing useless. It may take forty minutes to execute an area
three inches square, but doing this exercise taught me the beauty of

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these intricate patterns and I began a series of bramble paintings. These
bramble paintings were made in the winter in my studio in northwest
Connecticut. They began as views from the window or as impressions
remembered after a very cold walk. They also became less and less
moored to the actual subject, though never independent of observation
(Wild Vines in Winter).

Some of the paintings of woods were made on the island, but most
were painted just outside the studio. Connecticut in the summer is
unrelentingly and aggressively green. There are many shades of green,
but one looks forward to autumn when other colors arrive and leaves
begin to drop away.

I enjoy the immediacy of watercolor and the fact that one must respond
quickly to control the medium. In order to retain the luminosity of the
paper, color is applied in transparent layers, beginning with the lightest
value and successively moving to the darkest, building the image one
brushstroke at a time. Any white in the painting is “reserved” — it is
the paper itself. In many of the paintings the perimeter of the sheet is
untouched, the image increasing in detail closer to the center — so that
one can sense the painting coming to life. I do not use opaque white,
nor do I use a resist — and I never work from photographs. Except in
winter, I work out of doors where much of the experience of painting in
watercolor is dependent on the weather — dry or humid, still or windy.
I make numerous study sketches — not as dry runs but as a means to
closely observe the subject — to see what’s actually going on. Usually I
begin by representing the subject as accurately as I can, but at a certain
point, the painting takes over and makes its own demands.

A.P.
August 2017

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Wild Vines in Winter 2013 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Afternoon Shadows 2010 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Rock Study 1996 (16 x 12 in.), private collection
Slice 2011 (22 x 15 in.)
Crease 2012 (11 x 15 in.)
Wedge 2012 (11 x 15 in.)
Tumble 2012 (22 x 15 in.), private collection
Scramble 2013 (11 x 15 in.)
Winter Flames 2009 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Bramble Study 2006 (5 x 7 in.)
Flutter 2014 (5 x 7 in.)
Autumn 2004 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Layers of Green 2006 (12 x 16 in.)
August 2015 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Grape Vines 2016 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Banana Palm 2016 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Forest Stirrings 2009 (12 x 16 in.)
Shoreline in the Afternoon 2010 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Farmhouse, Lazio 2001 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
ABOVE Fields, Umbria 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection
TOP RIGHT Torgiano 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.)
BOTTOM RIGHT Thunderstorm, Umbria 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection
Rome, View from the Gianicolo 2012 (7 ½ x 11 in.), private collection
Rome, Piazza Sant’Eustachio 2011 (11 x 7 ½ in.)
Ceramic Duck, Italy 1984 (13 ½ x 9 ½ in.)
Tureen, Italy 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Blue Sofa 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Green Sofa 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Piano 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
Rome, Courtyard Sant’Ivo 2007 (11 x 7 ½ in.)
French Fields and Clouds 1997 (5 x 7 in.)
French Sky 1997 (5 x 7 in.)
Pear n.d. (4 x 3 in.)
Checklist

Rocks
Crease 2012 (11 x 15 in.)
Tumble 2012 (22 x 15 in.), private collection
Wedge 2012 (11 x 15 in.)
Slice 2011 (22 x 15 in.)
Afternoon Shadows 2010 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Rock Reclining 2005 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Rock Study 1996 (16 x 12 in.), private collection

Brambles
Scramble 2013 (11 x 15 in.)
Wild Vines in Winter 2013 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Winter Flames 2009 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
Bramble Study 2006 (5 x 7 in.)

Woods
Banana Palm 2016 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Grape Vines 2016 (15 x 22 in.), private collection
August 2015 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Flutter 2014 (5 x 7 in.)
Shoreline in the Afternoon 2010 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Forest Stirrings 2009 (12 x 16 in.)
Layers of Green 2006 (12 x 16 in.)
Autumn 2004 (12 x 16 in.), private collection

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Italy
Rome, View from the Gianicolo 2012 (7 ½ x 11 in.), private collection
Rome, Piazza Sant’Eustachio 2011 (11 x 7 ½ in.)
Rome, Courtyard Sant’Ivo 2007 (11 x 7 ½ in.)
Farmhouse, Lazio 2001 (12 x 16 in.), private collection
Ceramic Duck, Italy 1984 (13 ½ x 9 ½ in.)
Fields, Umbria 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Blue Sofa 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Green Sofa 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
San Fortunato, the Piano 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.), private collection
Thunderstorm, Umbria 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection
Torgiano 1984 (9 ½ x 13 ½ in.)
Tureen, Italy 1984 (5 x 7 in.), private collection

Other
French Fields and Clouds 1997 (5 x 7 in.)
French Sky 1997 (5 x 7 in.)
Pear n.d. (4 x 3 in.)

Studies [in the vitrine]

Bramble Studies 2015 (12 x 16 in.)
Snow Studies 2015 (12 x 16 in.)
Rock Studies 2011 (12 x 16 in.)

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Alexander Purves

Alexander Purves graduated from Yale College in 1958 and, following a

three-year tour in the U.S. Army, received a master’s degree from the Yale
School of Architecture in 1965. Following ten years as an architect with
Davis, Brody & Associates in New York City, he moved to New Haven
in 1976 to join the faculty of the School of Architecture and to open
his own practice. While in New York he worked primarily on middle-
income housing. His architectural design work in New Haven includes
the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and the renovation of the Hope
Building, both for the School of Medicine and executed in collaboration
with Allan Dehar Associates.

Having coordinated and taught design studios at all levels in the School
of Architecture, Purves currently restricts his teaching to “Introduction
to Architecture,” an undergraduate course open to any student in the
university. For fourteen years he led an intensive drawing seminar in
Rome for graduate architecture students. Purves has lectured widely and
participated as a visiting critic at schools including Harvard Graduate
School of Design, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania,
Carleton University, Rhode Island School of Design, Ohio State
University, and Regis High School in New York. He has also led a number
of Yale Educational Travel programs in Italy, France, and the British Isles
as well as Eastern Europe, the Turkish coast, Egypt, and Japan.

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 Purves’s watercolors have been included in many group shows. Major
exhibitions of his work have been held at the Blue Mountain Gallery
in New York City (2006, 2010, 2013, 2016), the Bar des Artistes at the
Union League Café in New Haven (2010), and the Washington (CT) Art
Association (1987, 1992, 2003). In 2013 the Whitney Humanities Center
mounted a show of his Roman sketches, and in 2002 his travel drawings
were exhibited at the Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery in a show titled
“On Site.”

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Designed and set in FF Meta typefaces
by Chika Ota for the Office of the Yale University Printer.
Printed by GHP in West Haven, Connecticut