Weltman's voice

It was nice to remember today that Sunday mornings weaving through the streets of Soho can involve more than just milling tourists and screaming fire engines.

Carolyn Weltman is a UK born artist with international recognition who continues, as her website says, to bring her art directly to the people. So yes, Prince street still boasts some real art that can arrest you in your steps and take you far from the quotidian. Carolyn’s mixed-media work (giclée prints, computer designs, sketches) belongs to that narrow zone of overlap between Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. She said she’s less angry than Schiele and indeed her work expresses a different sentiment than Schiele’s but in the strength and sensibility of the lines there is a Schiele-esque refinement. Just as in the perspectives and poses there is a hint of Klimt’s cabinet (recently exhibited for the first time in a comprehensive exhibit at Musée Maillol in Paris).

I asked Weltman who her favorite artists were. For draftsmanship Leonardo she said. She only became familiar with Schiele when she started showing her work to the public and people told her about him. Given the erotic content of Weltman’s drawings it isn’t surprising that the resemblance is obvious. I however just went through the archives on her site and found a sketch of New York and the Chrysler building. And somehow wasn’t surprised to see that this atypical piece by Weltman bears heavy resemblance to Schiele’s atypical early work (he drew trains and village vistas).

As a writer one tends to think of voice as the driving force of a narrative. Yann Apperry told me in a conversation recently that he searches for the voice when he wants to write a book. Qui parle? Weltman’s lines retain a unity whether they are sketching a shoe or a building or a woman. And I cannot help wondering if lines are for an artist what voice is to a writer. While she might share the voice with Schiele the story she is telling is her own. I cannot wait to check out some of the original and larger pieces of her work in Chelsea where she is permanently represented by Art at Large.