Audette at Work
“What will end up “inspiring” you are those things that satisfy some powerful visual internal need, which only time and much work will reveal.”
(The Blank Canvas, p. 47)
Audette brought a strong sense of discipline to her work and spent long hours in her studio as a matter of routine. She worked methodically from sketchbooks and photographs, and often developed two canvases at once to ensure flow from one work to the next. She was patient and resourceful, especially when she faced creative challenges. At those moments Audette might explore different media, play with scale, or simply turn a canvas upside down. She understood that variation and experimentation would open new doors.
Audette was also deliberate in how she designed her studio environments. Her workspaces over the years had several defining characteristics. They were filled with natural light and had abundant space for large equipment, from easels to printing presses. They also had bulletin-board style walls pinned with seemingly unrelated items: postcards, photographs, lightbulb filaments, doodles, pages torn from Art in America. Each object had meaning for Audette and taken together, they formed a roadmap of ideas and inspiration.
“It’s elating and instructive to discover that your vision resonates in sympathy with that of other artists, sometimes over a distance of centuries.”
(The Blank Canvas, p. 14)
Audette felt deeply connected to other artists, including her predecessors, her contemporaries, and her students. To attend the exhibition of another artist she admired was, in Audette’s words, a “wonderfully energizing experience.” In this spirit, she collected the work of other artists in her circle, and her homes in Connecticut and Vermont were filled with paintings, prints and sculptures from her community. These works, as well as Audette’s own art, were on display to the public when she participated in open studio events. Of course, Audette’s support for other artists was greatest in her classroom where she cultivated the talents of young art students. Celebrating the artistic expression of others was part of how Audette nurtured and sustained her own love of art.
“Artists educate themselves all their lives, in the direction and to the extent their art requires.”
(The Blank Canvas, p. 35)
Audette was a life-long student of art. To expand her knowledge and enhance her craft, she studied the contemporary art production of her day. She regularly attended museum and gallery exhibitions of other artists, both living and dead, and often left with a show catalog under her arm. These tomes joined the broad collection of art books she kept in her studio, a library she turned to for both reference and enjoyment.
Audette also steeped herself in art history where she found, in her words, “a vast reservoir of ideas.” By studying the work of other artists, she often found solutions to challenges she faced in her own work. For example, through her analysis of canvases by John Singer Sargent, Audette mastered how to achieve translucency in oil paintings. Her examination of Joseph Mallord William Turner’s work yielded insights into light and abstraction, and her exploration of John Haberle’s still lifes helped her learn the language of trompe l’oeil.
