Jeannette Montgomery Barron, New Drawings: An Exhibition

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #1, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

The drawings in Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s series of abstractions number in the hundreds, yet she has been almost reluctant to reveal their existence. Barron, a photographer known for portraits of denizens of the 80s art world (Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring among others) has a long resume of international exhibitions and monographs filled with her images. Several books have focused on downtown New York while Mirrors (2004) includes text by Edmund White, and Roman Hours (2021), a paean to her second home, is a collaboration with writer Andre Aciman. This summer, however, Montgomery Barron started to intersperse the photos on her Instagram feed with an occasional drawing, usually accompanied by brief text. “I know I’m supposed to be a photographer but I really love to draw,” read one.

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #2, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

“I started to draw whenever I had a long phone call with someone,” she told me recently. “it somehow made me focus more on the conversation. Then I realized I liked the doodles. I started drawing just to draw (without being on the telephone) about four-five years ago. But for the last two years I have focused on the drawings more and more.”

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #3, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

These drawings are small-scale and distinguished by an animated line. Sometimes the line becomes an outline to an Arp-like irregular shape while sometimes it meanders across the page. Overlapping loops create shapes Barron often colors in - choices that suggest overlap and transparency. Her materials are largely consistent - colored Fabriano papers, with Caran D’Ache Prismalo colored pencils as well as a "favorite type” of graphite pencil made by Pentel. Colored pencil as a medium is not known for a nimble range of applications yet Barron exploits its nature. It sits on the surface of the paper, rather than soaking in like ink or paint and in Barron’s hand light colors hold their own. She rarely draws on white paper, preferring paper with a strong tone. Particularly successful are the pieces that pair earthy ochre paper with areas filled with sweet colors like pale pink and peach, a combination that comes off as very unexpected and fresh.

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #4, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

Some viewers have asserted linkage between the drawings with their simple shapes and flat colors and Barron’s recent series of photographs of blank hand mirrors that stand against a colored ground, and when one sees them together in Barron’s studio, one is unlikely to protest this comparison. Yet while Barron’s drawings share the clarity of the mirror series they lack the photos’ deliberation and polish. Are the drawings “automatic” in the Surrealist sense? For the most part, yes!

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #5, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches

One’s first impression is of a quiet and meditative practice yet a closer look yields a line wayward and wobbly as if Barron’s hand was being slowly directed around the page by a phantom force or was tracing the trail of an ant. Barron has built a career as an ace whose art, produced via partnership with cameras and printers, is low on the scales of expressionism and human touch. Her drawings, however, register at the opposite end of the continuum. Their unaffectedness leaves nowhere to hide and they are poignant in that way. This is their most compelling quality - their existence as an intimate and immediate record of the unique movements of Barron’s hand.

Jeannette Montgomery Barron, Untitled #6, Caran D'Ache Prismalo pencils on Fabriano paper, 8 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches