As Marc Lincewicz sits at a tidy desk lined with books about Robert Frost and Rembrandt, the pale light of Ohio winter settles on his workspace. A small paper canvas lies corralled by a box of pens and a lone ink well.
Lincewicz squeezes one drop of ink into a small paper cup. One drop is all he needs to paint a wash on the canvas with a Sumi brush. Later, he’ll pick up a micron pen and coax a tiny landscape to appear on the page.
“For my last show, I focused on small work to bring the viewer in, to make them have to go up close to the drawing,” Lincewicz says.
His drawings are both small and large; small on the page, some only inches high, and large because he chooses scenes in nature. Trees and barns are prominent across his work.
“What I’ve been trying to do is tell little mini stories through all my drawings,” he says. “They’re kind of open-ended; they’re almost like short fiction.”
Lincewicz makes thousands of marks on the page, and the result feels paradoxically dense and light-hearted.
“Sometimes, they can look a little bit surreal,” he says. “Maybe something’s not quite right, and I think that adds to the character of the drawings.”
Critics have praised Lincewicz for his mastery of line, tone and texture. Spending an afternoon watching him work, one marvels at how fluid his pen strokes have become, with movement that suggests confidence and constant exploration.
“I don’t see at all how a drawing is going to resolve when I start it,” he says. “I have sort of a general rough idea – I think, ‘I want to do this,’ or I think, ‘I want to do that’ – and then it kind of takes on its own life, (and) I go where it seems to want to go.”
One can travel into any Lincewicz canvas and we see a narrative rich in suggestion. Have people just left the barn, or are they about to arrive? Why is that light still on? Trees become co-conspirators. Buildings seem to whisper secrets. Each line feels like a different character, as if all the lines are actors in a cast of thousands.
Other than hiking with his dog near his Clintonville area home, Lincewicz says he takes inspiration from nature, but is quick to point out he is not a plein air artist, trudging through the elements with art supplies in tow. Landscapes come to him in memory, an experience that is rife with extracurricular meanings.
“Through the mark-making, and through the shadowing and through the way I’m handling the light and the composition,” he hopes that viewers see his version of nature, he says.
“It’s drawing the things that feel the most comfortable, most pleasant,” he says about his work.
Lincewicz strives to collect images that connect him to living a Midwestern life: scenes and moments that are perhaps underappreciated because of their simplicity.
Back at his desk with the wash completely dry, Lincewicz draws single line marks in quick succession. He likes the physical feel of pen to paper.
“How the tip hits the paper, the relationship of that, you can feel that through your hand when you do enough of these drawings, and you make enough marks, and you start to feel the differences in the paper,” he says. “The differences in how new the pen is, how fresh the ink is – you pick up on all these things, and all of that gets carried into the drawing.”
Keny Galleries in German Village represents Lincewicz, and the relationship, he says, broadens his education of Midwestern art and artists.
Owners Jim and Tim Keny “know so much about Midwestern mid-century art that I’m constantly being educated by talking to them,” Lincewicz says.
Like most artists, Lincewicz works a demanding career from 9 to 5. After graduating from the Columbus College of Art and Design nearly 20 years ago, he worked his way up at Nationwide Insurance as a gifted designer. He now is associate vice president of creative services, a department that handles most of the advertising for the company.
Now that he is a director, his work is more hands-off, and that gives him a unique opportunity, supervising designers, writers, photographers and videographers.
“It’s a nice balance helping other creatives in their careers,” he says .
His hands-on work is more personal now, crafting smaller scenes at his desk in his off hours.
“My hope is that when people see the drawings, they might pick out a piece and just pause for a minute, even if it just gives them a moment of reflection or calm or peace, or just makes them feel good inside,” Lincewicz says. “Then I feel that I’ve contributed in a positive way, somehow.”
Cindy Gaillard is an Emmy award-winning producer with WOSU Public Media. Learn more about the weekly arts and culture magazine show Broad & High at www.wosu.org/broadandhigh.
RELATED READS
