Fall III and Fall IV

oil on canvas, 36" x 32"
oil on panel, 20" x 16"

A friend of mine came into my studio as I was selecting work for my show, Images of Optimism, which opens October 28th at the Bowery Gallery. She was excited about what she saw after telling my husband a few years before to watch the landscape where we live work its way into my paintings. I didn't believe it then. Even though I loved trees and sky, I thought it didn't reconcile the political issues I wanted to address. Maybe the thing is that I see it all and want to respond. In any case, the next thing she exclaimed really made the connection for me clear, "The paintings seem to say, 'The world has gone to hell in a hand basket, but look out your window because there is more to life than that!'" So it is not so much with an escapist's searching that I turn to the view, but with an interest in seeing, experiencing, and affirming that there is life outside politics. I still gaze with the knowledge that politics effects everything, however. It is impossible to look at nature and not think of climate change, for example, just as the BBC podcast, "The Best of Natural History" investigates the changing migration patterns of eels most likely due to global warming's effect on the Gulf Stream.

Bonnard painted scenes of domesticity and landscape during wartime; a search produced a painting unfamiliar to me. In 1916 he was assigned to make paintings of the First World War; the painting, Un village en ruines près du Ham (A Village in Ruins near Ham), depicts French troops near ruins. To me it is obvious that his heart wasn't in it, although his mark-making is unmistakable and the isolated contrasting colors of blue and orange hint at the colorist within, handcuffed in the task at hand.
So I wonder sometimes why I'm painting something pedestrian like a landscape, why to paint at all when there are so many artists taking on ENORMOUS (in every sense of the word) projects in new media. I don't feel like such an old fashioned girl. I do believe in those small, quiet acts of looking, seeing, and being that can be transposed onto canvas through a person. There is no substitute. I can't fix the world. I'm a small ripple: mailing Obama postcards to swing states, helping to register a few new voters at a rally, casting my single vote, sticking a bumper sticker to my car (someone stole it!), recycling & buying Fair Trade, taking care of my family, and painting. The paintings reflect my unique way of seeing. I don't want to back away from experiencing the world through paint. This is what I do.

Don't Be Afraid to Be Vibrant

oil on panel
20" x 16"

Vibrancy in this case, to me, means to be full of life. The painting is about being unafraid to be one's best; to be one's best self without worrying about how one measures up to someone else, nor to worry about outshining anyone. It is about existing outside of someones shadow. Sometimes being one's best means standing out, not conforming. Geoffrey Canada, director of the Harlem Children's Zone, said in an interview with Terry Gross (Fresh Air) that part of a students' success depends on cultural attitudes changing: for academic success to be seen as cool, not as joining the establishment.

The artist Ben Shahn said that conformity was a failure of hope, belief, and rebellion.

To be one's best for one's self-fulfillment, to really live and pursue what makes one truly happy is a calling. The journey and answers are different for each of us. The flowers are together in one vase, in one situation, but there are a variety, needing different amounts of space to flourish.

After painting this, the Unitarian Church I go to had a similar theme for the day. We were encouraged to strive and celebrate life, to do what I just described without being distracted by glitz or the many forms of escapism available. If we all have the courage, the hope needed to pursue our best selves, to encourage others in this pursuit, we will all be lifted up. Sunflowers filled the altar and at the end of the service we were all invited to pick one up, return to our seats and hold them up together.

Fall Tree

16" x 20"

oil on panel

This is a celebration painting. The leaves in fall know how to go out in style. They make a final burst of color before their descent. Pierre Bonnard squeezed the last bit of life in himself just as he squeezed paint out of tubes in order to paint Almond Tree in Blossom. It was done the week he died. As such it deserves our special attention.

I recently saw the Julian Schnabel film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, made after the book of the same title "by Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind. Written by Anonymous , IMDb"

While Bonnard uses his sight to make his last statement, he also uses his imagination and is aware of his mortality. Both Bonnard and Bauby embrace life, continuing to absorb and respond until the end, exploring their humanity, and the mystery of pain and beauty.

I am not in such dire straits, but this is my painting.

Fall II

16" x 20"

oil on panel

It seems that I am doing the seasons. Like many, I loved Vivaldi's Four Seasons in high school and was into the Omnimax movie featuring the music while I worked at the Boston Museum of Science. The rhythms in nature, music, and art are energizing but they also have a framework of something that makes sense, truth. Many people say that math is very reassuring to them because there is an objective rightness to it. I think the same could be said for rhythm, echoes of our heart beats, of life around us.

In Fall II there is a rhythm in the brushwork, a fracturing of the space not unlike Cezanne, but more with an eye for an all-over area of color predominating. The simple composition emphasises the space and scale, the vastness of the sky and grass bisected by a distant band of trees. This ability to see far, to take the long view invites relaxed contemplation. It drew my husband and I to make our home in Western New York, where the seasons, weather, and agriculture are an active part of life.