Golden Tree

12" x 16", oil on panel

Big news at the MFA Boston!

Reframing “American” Art was the topic of the National Public Radio show, OnPoint, this past Tuesday. Hosted by Tom Ashbrook, the guests were Elliot Bostwick Davis, chair of the Art of America’s Department at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Andrew McClellan, dean of Academic Affairs for Arts & Sciences and Professor of Art History at Tufts University. The occasion was the opening of the MFA Boston's new "Arts of the Americas" wing. Five hundred million dollars in the making, it houses approximately fifteen thousand works of art.

Some of the discussion involved how the exhibit reflects the United States' changing demographics and global awareness. Juxtaposing art from the U.S. with our neighbors can inform our identity. What is similar or dissimilar in the art and how does that speak to who we are? It can broaden our self concept, not unlike a child going to preschool to be socialized. The child learns about others, finds his/her place in the group and goes home to bring the new knowledge to the family (sometimes for better sometimes for worse!). The Internet sends us all to a virtual "pre-school" experience, allowing us to learn from one another well beyond the one-room school house. Maybe computers can't do it all. I believe it is short-sighted that geography is rarely taught in American public schools anymore. Our lack of education about other cultures is compounded by the physical location of the U.S.; disconnected from the other continents. We began by separating from Britain and turning away from the layers of European history ever present in the architecture of those places. The pioneers had a clean slate, a wilderness they felt compelled to claim and tame. Out with the old, in with the new. The new wing and the curators way of presenting the art is an opportunity to poke our heads up and see what was going on while we worked so hard. If we begin to consider the art of others as equal, we can increase our understanding and value of the people behind it.

Many American artists were viewed as pioneers. The first landscape painters were out to show Europe that although we didn't have its cathedrals we had something better - God's unspoiled creation. Alfred Steiglitz's 291 Gallery bridged the gap, showcasing American and European artists. Jackson Pollock and the Abstract-Expressionists put New York City on the map as the art capital of the world, pushing Paris to the side. A lot has happened.

I worked as a security guard at the MFA in college and had a lot of time to think about the collection. My husband and I met at the West Wing Entrance where I was selling admission tickets (May 1992). He was a visitor, a total stranger. A lot has happened. I just had to call in.

I was on hold when Ashbrook asked if there is any point in looking for commonalities between the art. He took my call. I said that certainly each artwork is it's own thing but the impulse for art-making is human and connects us. I said that Joseph Campbell made his life's work be the study of mythology of all cultures throughout the world and throughout history, including how those myths are represented in art. He found reoccurring symbolism on many levels. The collection lends itself to this exciting approach. For example, what does a portrait of Paul Revere, a Jackson Pollock painting, and a teenage museum visitor have in common (I promise I'm not setting you up for a joke)? Rebellion. The passion to challenge the rules. The will to make one's mark and envision a different world. There is great strength, determination, and perhaps some necessary pig-headed-ness mixed in as well.

So there you go. I'm going with my old art school buddy and I'll take my husband and son. We can think about who we were and who we are as we look.

Yellow Violet Light and Clouds and Square Series

Yellow Violet Light, 12" x 10" oil on canvas

Clouds and Square 1, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 2, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

Clouds and Square 3, digital image, iPad, Brushes app

The Cloud and Square Series were done immediately after the recent, early, sudden death of my husband's cousin. The squares show an empty space, a void, a loss. The inky, semi-transparent black is mourning but #3 is lighter, more at peace. The squares hover and demand attention; feelings that may otherwise be invisible become palpable. They make tangible the disappearance of the loved one, from being present to gone. A blue sky has frequently been used as a transcendent space, harmony within the universe, resurrection if you will.

Yellow Violet Light is similar in intention. Yellow and violet are complementary colors so especially vibrate when juxtaposed. They radiate together here causing some kind of visual sensation of motion like the hovering of the squares in the digital images which is less the effect of color than contrast, scale, handling, density, and context.

My good friend from grad school, the painter Aaron Brooks, told me this weekend that he thinks, "All art is a way of mythologizing our lives." I agree. I've written previously about Joseph Campbell and his assertion that mythology is the public dream. Artists create the myths that reveal universal truth. I've always felt my work is autobiographical and can envision a chronological cataloging of my work alongside, within my journals. They are about self-discovery, the phenomenon of living, a vehicle to process experience. Art is all that and a new experience, experience and ideas re framed. Art Weekly is like a book of hours, the medieval prayer book form structuring a day with times for specific prayers. I thought of making one of prints, but it turns out this blog does it for me. It has reflection, ritual, image and text, and is solitary on my end. Living and painting are the main things while galleries and sales are an annoying buzz in the background, a drain and potential distraction from the real work. Right now I'm left alone with my rituals, not such a bad thing.

Winter Landscape #9 (Fog) and Homage to 19th Century Painters

24" x 18"

oil on panel

8" x 10"

oil on canvas

These paintings comment on nineteenth century landscape painting like the Hudson River School. Painters like Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand set out to depict the American landscape as new territory, untouched, close to God, and unique. Their outlook was optimistic, like Obama's vision for America in the face of crisis es including environmental.

Dark trees often contrast with luminous sky in these works. Foliage is very textural and heavy while the skies are smooth and light. The second painting is a smaller jpeg of the third to show the naturalistic illusion of the painting which can't be seen except by stepping back. Close up the texture reads that this is painting and illusion is secondary. A band of black defines the right edge while the left is allowed to be atmospheric, a tension that makes the eye scan back and forth.

Charles Darwin was active at about the time as the Hudson River School. The subject of Darwin, art and evolution was the focus of a recent Brian Lehrer Show. The book: The Art Instinct – Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton , editor of http://artsandlettersdaily.com was the impetus for the discussion and Dutton was the guest. The book's premise is that evolution, not culture, determine’s taste through natural selection. It is a Darwinian take on aesthetics. Dutton thinks that our early ancestors were imprinted with certain landscape views in their travels and that is what makes us respond to such views in art. It takes Joseph Cambell's ideas on art and Jung's collective unconscious further by connecting it with evolution. As a painter I find this fascinating but I don't plan on making any art deliberately tailored to exemplify it.

The Yale Center for British Art is featuring an exhibit on Darwin's influence on the visual arts titled "Endless Forms': Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts" which closes May 3, 2009.