THE PIANIST

LIS CENA

FIGURES 12 and 13

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Charcoal and charcoal pencil on paper

The exploration of the potentials of the hand as a tool of expression, in a world unbound by the framework of parallel and perpendicular precision, was new territory for me. Discovering these potentials and appropriating them through the art of mark-making gave shape to this project.

Viewing the hands as structures that move, express, create, provided an essential dimension through which the hand as a part of the whole—the body—could be observed and understood. It is through interactions and relationships to other structures that hands become the artist-in-making. This awakened my desire to explore the art of the pianist. The piano, as a construct of precise structures within a rigid frame of endless possibilities of tone and color, is a potent and fertile ground for the exploration of the hand as a construct of natural expression, characterized by its freedom of movement.

After learning to draw the hand as a form with its inherent articulation, I produced a series of sketches of a pianist in the act of playing. I observed that hands were no longer hermetic movable structures. They are endings that derive their expression from the body and are informed by the mind and the spirit. The two drawings engage this investigation—an expression of these very qualities of the hands as parts of the body and the depiction of their movements, interactions, and expressions as essential qualities in the process of music-making.

The lessons that have come from investigating the hands through drawing have added to my understanding of drawing as an artistic, poetic, and intellectual practice. They have also informed my understanding of the art of the piano. Only when one learns the hand’s capacities can one can master thought.