Snowing Over the Town

Snowing Over the Town, 26" x 20", oil on canvas

I had the joy of visiting the ICA Boston for the first time last week and saw the James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, the work of Mark Bradford, and the film A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz which was censored by the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery.

Mark Bradford's paintings/collages have the existential light of Rothko combined with the grittiness of the streets of LA where he collects papers for his work. He also uses the tissue paper used for permanents from the hair salon where his mother works. They are semi-transparent rectangles which he applies shingle-fashion similar to silver and gold leaf. It is very exciting to see new paintings to love that are so about what painters love about paintings AND they are by an African-American artist who incorporates his background and experience. In an interview with New York Magazine, Bradford says when he says he is a painter, some people think he means a house painter. His paintings are selling for $250k, not that I write often about pricing but in this context it is ironic.

It was a surprise to be able to view A Fire in My Belly, shown by the ICA in support of the film, freedom of speech, and against the Smithsonian's decision to pull the work after controversy broke out. The AIDS crisis is the content of the short-film and the controversy is a reaction to the few seconds of footage showing ants crawling on a crucifix. Republican Congressmen Eric Cantor and John Boehner, and William Donohue, president of Catholic League lead the charge.

The imagery is shocking because it is so visceral and the crucifix is a sacred object. My personal interpretation of the film is that Jesus is a symbol of human suffering and injustice. During the AIDS crisis people with the disease were condemned for the way AIDS is transmitted. Many ignorant people, some religious, thought that it was a deserved death sentence, some taking it so far as to say a judgement by God. The illness is harsh and in the beginning very fast at attacking the body; it desecrates the physical self. The ants are like a plague like the disease and also insects known for their societal organization, thus perhaps a metaphor for society's reaction to the person affected with AIDS.

The film also addresses sexuality, religion, and death, always scandalous. [It is a combination I have worked with, having a show in 2006 at the Bowery Gallery called "Sex, Death, and the Spirit". Click to see From Adam's Rib, an image from the show and see below* for a description from Image: A Journal of Religion and the Arts.] Even in cases when art criticizes religion it is important to allow for freedom of speech so that a majority does not gain the power to suppress others and provide the only opinion. Part of the debate is whether it is appropriate to use public money for art that some see as offensive, as is the case with the Smithsonian. I say that it is because "offensive" art is often politically charged in which case voices should not be rubbed out. Diversity and debate are American values that should trump religion which is supposed to be separate from government.

Don't forget history. Pythagoras, Plato and others were accused of heresy against the Greek gods for their idea that mathematics and music have a structure that relates to the universe. Aristotle was executed. NPR has a story called "A Musical Message Discovered in Plato's Works".

Snowing Over the Town is relatively peaceful, having the charm and beauty of snow falling over a community. The trees are edgy and press in, perhaps clues to emotions that may exist between the walls of otherwise homogenous homes.

*Sex, Death, & the Spirit

Fair warning: you’ll see some graphic images viewing the work of painter and printmaker Nicole Maynard on display this month at the Bowery Gallery in New York City. Just consider the subject matter of the exhibition: sex, death, and the spirit—or “all the things we are not supposed to discuss at a dinner party.” The title painting is a creepy mixture of eroticism, dread, and spiritual ecstasy. One painting portrays Eve with both male and female anatomy, a snake as a penis, and a look of enjoyment on her face. Many of the works in this exhibit draw inspiration from the book of Genesis to explore religious and political themes. While we cannot predict the range of responses our readers might have to these paintings, we don't believe Maynard's work is gratuitous. Some will call it misguided, but others will praise it for courage and insight. -  Image: A Journal of Religion and the Arts

Dreamed Winter

6" x 12", oil on panel

It's a December themed post this week. No snow here in Rhode Island yet except the white blanketed hills and sleigh bells I have in my head. The Nutcracker is there, too, specifically Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. One could imagine a ballerina twirling around in a tulle skirt, flitting gracefully among the dots in Dreamed Winter like colored snow.

Damien Hirst puts diamonds on a skull and I'm talking about faeries. Everyone is charmed, enthralled, transported when watching The Nutcracker performed live. The music, dance, story, and set design leave our cynicism out on the brown snowed curb. Mr. Hirst can work with excess, a financial circus in art that is not without merit. I will be daydreaming all by myself.

Winter Landscapes #15 (Smooth in Blue and White) and #17 (Hazy Sky and Snow)

12" x 12" oil on panel

Now that it's officially spring I have to get caught up on posting my winter paintings; these are the last this year.

Smooth in Blue and White reminds me a bit of Georgia O'Keefe and the paintings she did of adobe buildings in New Mexico with their soft, flowing, yet rectilinear forms. She is an example of an artist who painted both abstractly and representationally , like myself. She said, "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for." Those "things" are why painters paint rather than choose a different medium. Arthur Dove, a contemporary (and another fave of mine) painted similar forms.

Hazy Sky and Snow has a sun smack in the middle and towards the top of my composition. The sky and land bisect the square. Light colors shimmer like winter light. The arrangement reminds me of the painter Adolph Gottlieb, famous for his abstract paintings often having the particular structure of a vertical format with a circle painted at the top half and a jagged shape on the bottom. The two forms set in opposition stimulate metaphors in the viewer. I especially love his Rolling, 1961, with its landscape format, nice and bold calligraphic black line at the bottom, and two large circles in colors I love together: red and blue. He makes use of the color of the canvas like Chinese landscape painters use the white of the paper, something I enjoy as well.

My spring series will continue shortly...

Winter Landscape #14 The Neighbor's House & #16 My New Neighborhood

both are 12"x12" oil on panel

When I think about these paintings I can make fun of myself, hearing Weird Al Yankovic's latest song, White and Nerdy (the resemblance to certain loved ones is hilarious) or the theme song to the kids movie Over the Hedge, Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds.

I hesitated to post these. I'm living in the suburbs of Rhode Island, back to the suburbs (song) like where I grew up in Massachusetts, no longer the countryside in Western New York State. The subject is pedestrian; the suburbs are planned. I didn't want it to seem like the strange, artificial neighborhood in one of my favorite childhood books, A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle. Everything is the same in that neighborhood and it's really creepy. Magritte's Empire of Lights is eerie with its blue sky and clouds but town in darkness.

I don't want the pictures to look like so many dead paintings done by amateurs. This kind of landscape is done to death like roses and it's hard to escape the cliches. I think I overcame them in my series of roses and I hope I did here. I'm happy with the way the trees came out and there is an overall joyous feel. People may see the familiar subject and feel comforted, something they can relate to, something pleasant. That's fine but it can also annoy me because they may miss the point just as much as they may find an abstraction illegible, undecipherable. Or the joie de vie will come across and the viewer will perceive the whole thing without additional knowledge like how I intuit a lot of classical music without being a musician. Appreciation can be just as deep because the art speaks to humanity not just the trained and educated.

I'm getting acquainted with my new home, orienting myself and using art as one way to do it. Many artists worked to capture the every day: Vuillard, Chardin, Vermeer, the photographer Nan Goldin and photography as a medium in general. The painter and art critic Fairfield Porter painted similar subjects to this and I love is work; it's so fresh. Who is to say that what superficially seems mundane can't be extraordinary? So much occurs within the routine. We study the every day lives of past cultures to find out what made them unique and how they are similar or dissimilar to us. And we always look at their art.

Maybe there are people in these houses who are hooked on the game Farmville on Facebook. There's a good chance because there are over eleven million daily users. This isn't a typo. The draw in pretending to be farmers may relate to the new trend of consciousness about where food comes from and the environmental and fiscal advantages of buying local. Maybe the the bucolic life is fantasy enough for suburbanites and city dwellers. I think the peaceful feeling I'm painting is like that. I don't play Farmville because painting is so fascinating but kudos to you if you do.

Winter Landscapes #12 and #13

Winter Landscape #12, Stone Wall Upper & Lower, 12" x 9" oil on panel

Winter Landscape #13, Dusk, 9" x 12" oil on panel

The movie Julie and Julia is every struggling creative person's fantasy. A true story, writer, Julie Powell, is frustrated and bored in her day job is inspired by another artist, Julia Child.

["Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music." -Julia Child]

Combining her love of cooking and writing, she gives herself a monumental task with a deadline: to make every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook in 365 days, blogging about it on the way. It isn't easy, sometimes stressful, sometimes fun, but Julie succeeds in immersing herself in the process and gains literary attention (not to mention a major motion picture). I heard a writer on the radio tell about a strategy another writer recommended him: to write your life story in one hour a day at the same time for twelve days. Artists can find the structure and discipline such strategies can offer. Similar art school problems I heard from more than one teacher is to "make a hundred of them", "work on it for thirty-six hours", "draw the negative of it", or to paint on a deck of cards. The result would flush out problems in the work, probably resolve many, and provide focus. Painter On Kawara is known for his series of "date paintings" numbering over two thousand. Working in a series follows suit, like I am doing in my series of the seasons.

Winter Landscape #12, Stone Wall Upper and Lower, gets its title because my house has a beautiful stone wall around it. As a little girl, a thirty minute or so drive with my grandfather to visit my aunt in Ipswich, MA seemed like a long. Before the days of dsi's or even tapes of kids music, we had a lot of time on our hands. He came up with a game of counting all the stone walls and white fences we saw; simple, it delighted me. The center band of gray here has dots that don't really construct it but bubble up, pointing in perspective to the grass and sky above. The blue shadow has a different vanishing point off to the right. The painting is made of bands, the gray window edges, the upper left of which isn't fully covered with paint but dryly gone over allowing the white of the panel to show through and make light. The sky has blended bands of blue and of course there is the snow. It is called "Upper and Lower" because the wall is the middle line between the bottom and the top. The top could almost be spring and so in this way it is like an earlier painting of mine, Winter on the Left, Spring on the Right.

Winter Landscape #13, Dusk uses the white window edge to accentuate the blue of the snow, sky, and blue cast to the brown trees outside. It is quite stunning to look out and see that glow at the end of the day. I love to exclaim to my son, "Look, it's blue out!" trying to pass on that painter's knowledge that white isn't always white. Your assignment for the week, painter or not: look at the white walls of a room and see the color changes created by light. Notice warm vs. cool, bright vs. dark, blue/purple vs. yellow. If you get good you'll notice other colors, too. Take a break from texting and look : )

Thaw #2

18 x 24 oil on panel

Whites of melting snow give away to green grass. The top center is a focal point, a restful blue-gray sky. The painting is similar to my abstractions done in 1998 and exhibited at Villanova University. Light lines form a frame, an artificial spatial point that takes the painting into a metaphorical realm, a platonic conception of thawing winter. Matisse did it with chairs, for example. Rather than a rendering of a chair, his depictions are the idea of chairs, re situated in artificial, fantastical rooms partially observed, partially imagined. On a grimmer note, Andy Warhol's electric chairs' repetitiveness produced via silkscreen are also about the concept of an electric chair and all the ethical questions tied to it. Presenting any picture, photograph, painting, whatever, of an electric chair comes with the baggage of the moral debate over capital punishment. Art works this way, inevitably symbolic. Portraits can be seen as emblematic of the human condition despite the specificity of a particular person in time through the eyes of a particular artist, likewise for Christian art. Rodin and Camille Claudel's figurative sculptures are great examples. Airy and cold, Thaw #2 is my experience and concept of winter.