The centerpiece of Figures is a cycle of large-scale drawings that Artin worked on this past year while she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy of Rome. The figures in question are life-size charcoal renderings of classical statuary, among them such cherished pieces as the Discus Thrower, the head of Medusa, Atleta (viewed from both the front and the side), and a striking Dionesius. “To people acquainted with the sculpture of antiquity, these may be familiar images, but I had never drawn them before,” Artin explains. “After years of focusing on watercolors, it was a renewed challenge—and a joy—for me to be working on such a large scale and with charcoal, making drawings that are both muscular and precise, that grow with time. For me these large drawings are the equivalent of paintings.”

Accompanying these large-scale charcoal works is a selection of Artin’s smaller, elegant nudes, rendered in watercolor wash in a tone that she describes as “halfway between sanguine and sepia, the color of flesh and blood, of warm shadows on skin.” Artin paints the nudes on Fabriano Ingres paper; these figures, also made in the studio, are taken from models posing as briefly as thirty seconds and as long as ten minutes. “Quick, dynamic poses are the perfect complement to spending weeks on the charcoal drawings,” Artin observes. “They keep me loose and attentive to detail.”

Close attention to detail typifies Artin’s approach to the third category of work offered in this fall’s exhibition, her market pictures. In these pictures, which she paints on hand-made cotton paper, there are fruit and vegetable stands, local characters, and her distinctive, colorful Roman vehicles, whose blemishes—rust spots and repair wire, pipe entrails and whimsical ribbons—are fundamental to their charm. The market at hand is the daily fruit, flower, and vegetable market in the Campo de’ Fiori where Artin lives, and from which she continues to find regular subject matter for work. “Rome is of course known for its famous fountains, with their baroque sprays and splashes of water,” the artist says, “but for me the city is equally a fountain of ideas and inspirations, some classical, some contemporary, all endless—and endlessly rewarding.”

Described in the September issue of Vanity Fair as a painter in possession of “a gift so rare it humbles artists with far more stellar reputations,” Artin has been likened to an “exceptional athlete” by the painter Eric Fischl. “I have never seen such grace, such sureness, so much sexy pleasure from the hand of a living artist,” he says. “It is hard for the lay person to comprehend the difficulty she has mastered in her life drawings. To watch her work is to watch a master.”