Western NY Landscape 10 Ceramic Relief 3 1/2x4 1/2_2009
Western NY Landscape 11 Ceramic Relief 3x5_2009
Western NY Landscape 12 Ceramic Relief 3 1/2x7_2009
Here's a little summer for you in January. Our move from the Rochester area to Rhode Island had eventful weather. We hit white out blizzard conditions and needed to sleep just off the road from three to six a.m. Our new town had an uncharacteristic six inches of snow, while back in Rochester a friend reported snow up to mid-thigh. While I like the snow, dangerous driving conditions and salt and dirt tracked through my new house by five movers makes me less than appreciative at the current moment.
The bottom two reliefs remind me a bit of the landscape paintings of the 18th century Rococo artist, Jean-Honore Fragonard. Landscape with Three Washerwomen has the pastel coloring that makes me consider the comparison. His work is exuberant which I think is another quality these reliefs share. I see my reliefs as not only objects but as images. Despite their solidity and material resistant to deterioration, they carry a fleeting moment, and particular weather conditions. Not made to look fully illusionistic, "real", they are somehow hyper-real. I used to hate Fragonard and Rococo art for its frivolity, regarding it as "foo foo". It seems that some points in history disdain others but appreciation comes around eventually. I never heard anyone in art school going around saying how much they were influenced by Rococo art, in keeping with the style's initial dismissal by art critics as "frivolity". These are as close to it as I get and I admit some discomfort at getting so close, but I now see subtlety, light, space, and passion in this time period and would like to claim those qualities for myself.
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