Marc-André Hamelin

MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN is a super-pianist, now based in Waltham, capable of mastering music from Baroque to modern without flinching. I had two long interviews with him in Bordeaux and came away as calm as he was. I felt compelled to capture that feeling of peace in my portrait. When I asked him what he thinks of today’s wild emotional displays at the keyboard, he took a few seconds to explain. “I want people to come to listen to me, not to watch me. I am boring to look at. I don’t move around. You will learn nothing from me, except from my music.”

Pen and Ink by Michael Johnson

Size: 14x11

About Michael Johnson
The piano has always attracted me as a high-wire act -- taking to the stage with two hours of solo music in a player’s head and risking the chance of audience approval or not. I began as a writer and foreign correspondent but have ended up probing this brave side of the pianist’s personality. I have written at some length about all the pen-and-ink portraits in this exhibit. Some of the drawings have been published in newspapers and magazines, others publicly exhibited. It is gratifying to see how communication just happens. My favorite medium is pen-and-ink on 300-gram mixed-media art paper. I try to avoid cross-hatching for gradations, but achieve the effect with a wash of water over the line on a sable brush.