The Last Supper

24" x 24"

oil on panel

This was done after Hans Holbein the Younger's Last Supper. Renaissance paintings are so compositionally elegant. They are geometrically solid. I enjoy the three paneled background and simplified the image to focus on the shapes and the light. I removed the figures except for some disembodied hands and feet, not feeling the necessity to have twelve sets as the narrative is now familiar to a large population. The floating body parts remind me of similar pictures that I saw in Italy at the monastery where Fra Angelico lived and painted. As I am interested in golden rings as symbols, the singular halo and its austere significance attracted me. I think it is especially beautiful hovering in the blue sky. Its lightness is in opposition to the compression of forms on earth, represented by the table and floor at the bottom of the picture.

Passing the Butterfly II, White Peacock

16" x 12"
2007
Oil on panel

This painting is addressing the same theme as Passing the Butterfly (Homage to Andrew Forge). The analogous palette is limited to green, yellow-green, yellow, white, black, and gray. I reached a point in painting it where I thought it was done. It looked good close-up, but at a distance it seemed illustrational and tight. Illustration can be Art with a capital “A”. The problem that keeps illustration from being fine art in many cases is that it is in service to getting a clear message across in a very concrete way. That being the goal, it is not often at liberty to pursue the mysterious and push metaphors to the limit. These things add complexity to art and offer the multiplicity of interpretation and rich symbolism that makes art vital and timeless.
So how did my painting get stuck being so literal? Sometimes I like to adhere to a likeness and I was being fairly loyal to the particular butterfly, the White Peacock. Maybe I was feeling cautious. I let it sit several weeks, like putting writing away in a drawer, and then felt ready to dig into it again. It required a bold mindset, as one might imagine Sargent feeling when he painted brushstrokes with bravura. He was never fussy. I made the three forms relate more to each other by bringing colors back and forth amongst them. I like the way the black separation (space) between the fingers of the upper hand visually blends into the body of the butterfly (form), like a crevice. It is a split in half that is echoed in the bottom hand through the yellow vertical line and the division in light and shadow. It isn’t obvious which hand is giving and which is taking. Often the act of giving fills oneself, as the cliché “It is better to give than to receive” extols.

Yellow-rimmed Eighty-eight, Michelle's Colors

36” x 24”
Oil on panel
2007

The palette of violets, blues, reds, and black is one which appeals to my painter-friend, Michelle Albert. We met at Massachusetts College of Art where we were in the same painting section. One of the exciting things about going to art school is the process of learning from ones peers. It is like a laboratory of people experimenting and searching. Observing the process of others is stimulating and contributes to one’s own creativity and learning process. Lasting influences are forged as ideas are embraced or rejected, often unconsciously.
I like the light in this piece, its dim, rich vibrancy, like that of stained glass, reinforced by and the black lines like lead. I want the image to dazzle, as do the Tiffany windows in my church.

Everything I am about to say is already known by others, but I think it is useful in relationship to the painting.

I am doing a series of paintings of hands holding a butterfly. I feel as though I could paint the subject over an over with many variations as it is a strong metaphor to me of the fragility, beauty, and temporariness of life. It is something we can hold only for a little while; it isn't fully in our control. We are in the often difficult situation of being fully invested in life while acknowledging that it is not ours to keep. It has to penetrate our hearts and then fly away. This is true of our own lives as well as our relationships with others. It is a magical, difficult thing to have friends and family who are so loved live far away. Transportation in the modern world allows us to have relationships long distance, which is a luxury, but also presents the problem of hellos and goodbyes. Sometimes the goodbyes are harder because there lurks the shadow of acknowledgement of death. The Greeks thought that the gods were jealous of humans for their mortality because of the preciousness it gives to living. Celebrating the moment is a way to stay in that frame of mind. I write this in an airport, waiting to board a plane to return to my husband and son after a weekend away to visit my brother in Florida. The butterfly in the hands is the way we hold others in our hearts; the beating is stronger for the weight.

Butterfly Release

30 in. x 24 in.

A joyous painting, it depicts butterflies set free from a box. The action is important here, so details are mostly absent and forms overlap, suggesting the chaotic fluttering of a moment. It is impressionistic in that respect. The cream colored butterfly in the upper right is the most in focus; thickly painted outlines also offer tangibility during an emphemeral event. I think that I would like to explore this idea further. Like Van Gogh's sunflowers, yellow carries an uplifting mood easily; high notes on a keyboard.

Butterfly Pinned

36" x 24"

oil on panel

The butterfly appears to be mounted for display, but that was not my conscious intention. The space is suggestive of a box, the white plane behind the butterfly is like a flap. It is not the first time that I have pictured a butterfly as a crucifixion (the symbology is resurrection in Christianity). The grays, black and white allow what color there is (variations on the complements green and red) in the insect to carry more weight. The dynamic, linear veins defining the segments are rhythmic and strong, electrified currents in a clinical atmosphere.

Strangely enough, the thought of a Russian dancer from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker comes to mind. The drama of the dancer's outstreched arms and the struggle of the kicks while squatting, and the boldness of it all seems in sync with this creature. It seems ready to spring to life like one of the toy soldiers coming out of a box in the ballet. The dance is called the Trepak, and I found something similar in Russian Dance Ensemble Barynya's video clip:

http://www.barynya.com/video/nedorostok.mpg

White Circle, Blue, Black

24" x 24"

oil on panel

Despite the reduction, this image recalls Romantic landscapes, which has led me to the word "sublime". A Wikipedia entry regarding the sublime in art has expressed my intentions rather succinctly (I have cut and pasted parts of it below).

An artistic reference to this piece is Arthur Dove, a painter who embraced the sublime.

Wikipedia entry
Victor Hugo touched on aspects of the sublime in both nature and man in many of his poems (Poems of Victor Hugo). In his preface to Cromwell (play) he defined the sublime as a combination of the grotesque and beautiful as opposed to the classical ideal of perfection.

The experience of the sublime involves a self-forgetfulness where personal fear is replaced by a sense of well-being and security when confronted with an object exhibiting superior might, and is similar to the experience of the tragic. The "tragic consciousness" is the capacity to gain an exalted state of consciousness from the realization of the unavoidable suffering destined for all men and that there are oppositions in life that can never be resolved, most notably that of the "forgiving generosity of deity" subsumed to "inexorable fate".[15]

The sublime, as a theme in aesthetics, was the founding move of the Modernist period. Attempting to replace the beautiful with the release of the perceiver from the constraints of the human condition, these ideas were amplified in critical theory through the work of Jean-François Lyotard[16]. For Lyotard, the sublime's significance is in the way it points to an aporia in human reason; it expresses the edge of our conceptual powers and reveals the multiplicity and instability of the postmodern world.

Moving Cloud

24 in. x 24 in.

Drifting clouds are fleeting and paintings are fixed. The cloud is off-center, pushing towards the right. It is framed in a blue rectangle inside a white square, drawing attention to its placement and the artist's awareness that it is artifice and a slice of a larger thing, a moment of sky. Clouds are all about change, while squares are of stasis. Like photographs, the rectangle contains time. It is a window to get distance to look closer, if that paradox makes sense. The painting is monochromatic. The whites offer tranquility and the blue brilliance in motion. The cloud is passionately peaceful in its solitary direction.

September Eleventh

digital image

I have been making art in response to 9/11 since it happened and then a piece or two at each anniversary as a way to personally set aside time to think about it and as a kind of memorial. It is too big for art to fully encompass, and too world changing to ignore. The New York Times asked five artists to draw and write about the event and has their work on-line today: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/09/10/opinion/20070911_OPART_SLIDESHOW_index.html
They artists they chose work in a traditional, representational manner. While I like the work, I think it was a conservative move so as to take no risk of offense.
I think I am going to paint the digital version. The bright blue is the blue sky of that clear day, the black forms are the towers, Pentagon, and plane that crashed in Stonycreek Township (surrounded by green for the field). The black is for negation, voids. The white plane is also cloud-like. The figure is in a crucified position and is representative of all human loss and suffering surrounding that day. The hands and arms are drawn loosely, in order to be more like wings and feathers, echoing the wings of the plane and suggestive of resurrection.

Black Cloud, White Cloud

16" x 20", oil on panel

The diagonal axis in this painting creates momentum. The sky is not placid, but filled with marks in various directions albeit small in scale in order to emphasize the masses of the clouds. It has a narrow color range which is also in service to the main actors, the clouds, in their opposing black and white. The black cloud is in pursuit of the white, and comes close enough to cast its shadow. A clear blue stretches behind them into the distance as the white cloud bumps against the right edge of the panel in flight.

Constable is known for his cloud paintings; here are three:

http://markbarryportfolio.com/works/Assorted/Constable.jpg

http://www.german.leeds.ac.uk/RWI/2001_02project2/ccloud.jpg

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.metmuseum.org/special/KarenBCohenCollection/images/1.L.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.metmuseum.org/special/KarenBCohenCollection/1.L.htm&h=352&w=300&sz=35&hl=en&start=35&sig2=DeE9Q1Yl_Wb9DhStkSuh2g&um=1&tbnid=RAYvRnPRmRuAiM:&tbnh=120&tbnw=102&ei=xlPhRo2MBIaUiwHGqry0DQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dconstable%2Bcloud%2Bpaintings%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D100%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GGIC%26sa%3DN

They are really impressive in their intensity, especially the last one. I think clouds' amorphousness gave this 18th/19th century painter the opportunity to use vigourous brushwork with emotional vigor not unlike what the Abstract Expressionists did later.

Butterfly Breathing

oil on panel, 30" x 24"

The air is like cotton candy, but the picture is not saccharine. Figure and butterflies are part of the same environment; the same air fills them. The butterflies are staggered and there is a halting motion to the piece, almost like stuttering, especially in the drawing of the mouth and first butterfly to emerge. The red lines forming the figure and the pink flesh are the colors of blood and life. The butterflies are extraordinary because of their vibrant coloring, freedom, and harmony within this environment. Butterfly breathing is the act of acclimating to the world. It is not always a smooth process, peppered with stops and starts.

Butterfly Box, Below

oil on panel, 28" x 24"

This picture aims at capturing the flutter. The assymetry, open form, atmospheric space with linear moments for definition all aid in the effect. The wings feel like the delicate membranes that they are. Hints at an open box at the bottom give a reference point to create a sense of space as the butterfly lifts upward.

Butterfly Hand (v.2), Pink

36" x24", oil on panel

I just finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. It was voted one of the top one hundred books of the century by the New York Public Library, and it is now one of my favorites. In the back of the novel is a quote by Smith, "I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: to live, to struggle, to be in love with life - in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful - is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us."

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion remarks about the way our culture doesn't encourage one to pause very long to mourn. Descendants from hearty pioneers and immigrants who don't look back, we are supposed to dust ourselves off and keep going. This instinct for self-preservation is important, but we can also lose ourselves if we get caught up in a whirlwind of busyness and distractions. There is a reason why religious people often seek solitude.

What I like about Smith's statement is that it is parallels the idea that everything has its time, but it goes further to say that it is better to experience all things than to be numb. It also reminds us that we should expect imperfection and change. We should not feel cheated because our lives do not mirror ads picturing happy people and their new car or trip to the Bahamas.

What does this all have to do with art? Everything. I use my art as a way to contemplate and express life's experiences, not to make mirages that a viewer might find easier to see. People who are engaged in life in a similar way might want to look here at my attempts to grasp what cannot be grasped. It is no wonder that walking into the studio is still daunting.

Cloud

24" x 24", oil on panel

This is a slice of sky, a window in a void, a look into blue sky from outer space. The sky is tranquil, cheerful, yet singular, solitary inside the larger black square.

I think it would be too simplistic to reduce this to a matter of pure optimism versus pessimism. Isolated and out of context, the relationship the cloud has to anything else is unknowable. A transitory part of a weather system, floating over a particular country, we see it here as a Platonic form. Rather than pessimistic, the void may be the unknown, not necessarily anything sinister. Maybe the ideal is unreachable, or maybe the cloud is a snapshot of something at its best. The painting is something about time and the human condition; the present is visible while the future stays persistently out of sight.

Female Loss

24" x 24", oil on panel

I shot this in natural daylight, but there still was a glare; I find this difficult to avoid when photographing thickly painted, dark images. The vigorous texture is visible, though.

Description: a small, pink, central circle is inside a black square, inside a dark brown/plum square. The black is vacuous, but the warmth of the pink and plum relate, creating a spatial tension between depth and surface.

There is something ocular about these circles I am doing. They seem monocular, like the view through a telescope, also planetary despite their apparent flatness. I am fascinated, as are many, with the luminous spheres that hang in space, particularly the moon. It is full of dichotomies, near and far, familiar and mysterious, deceptively simple.

White Circle, Blue

oil on panel, 24" x 24"



I'm considering posting images in Art Weekly without my accompanying comments. I was told in art school to leave the writing to the critics and historians. It wasn't that I was bad at writing; it came up in a different context. It was about the way visual art usually originates pre-verbally, and many artists aren't very articulate except in terms of their medium. Often there is a lot more to the art than what artists say, and sometimes the comments can be tangential. During school and after I found writing to be a way to get to know the artwork that I made. The teacher in me enjoys offering a way in, but to artists, what I do is very legible. It is all academic, not avant guarde. Those unused to minimalism might feel a wall crashing down at so few elements, the "anyone can do that" attitude, or else that there must be more but they aren't "getting it".


The above painting is academic in that its form of color and simple shapes was once new and now is not. I don't think anything new in terms of form in a big conceptual way can happen anymore in painting. That is why a lot of people say it is dead and move on to performance, installation, video, computer art, etc. I still find meaning in it and need to have it be a part of my life on a regular basis, no substitutions. I think of it like the orchestra. Many composers have abandoned the classical orchestra or have experimented with it to push its limits. It does have a particular sound even though the range is incredible. But that is the thing. The orchestra, like painting, can be a vehicle for communicating very specific things in wondrous, pleasurable, thought-provoking, beautiful ways. They are both very plastic (stretchable, malleable). They both also have a history, particular elements that make them what they are, and other certain "givens".


White Circle, Blue is a peaceful, meditative image. The central circle and the balanced square provide a feeling of equilibrium. The way the paint is applied, the gestures of the strokes, makes the image the opposite of something mechanically done. It has soul, evidence of the touch we all need. The thickness of the paint gives the painting substance, body, and skin. It is filled with light.

White Circle

collage on Arches paper, 5" x 3"


There must be more, right?

As there are subtleties to quiet, so there are to this kind of art.

I never quite thought of myself as a Minimalist, although I have done some geometric abstraction in the past. Minimalists are sometimes described as working without metaphor and personal expression, focusing instead on visual impact. I am all about all those things and think that the most basic of forms can inspire metaphor.

I've decided to not be afraid of simplicity, since the impetus to make work in this vein is strong. I'm not abandoning anything, just widening my scope. It is summer and it is like learning how to relax. Productivity, filling time up with activities can be distractions from reflection, as many people seeking spiritual direction will testify. Art objects are made to contemplate. Many people go to museums as if to church.

This work has silence in it.

Butterfly Hand (v.1)

oil on panel, 36" x 24"

The body (of the butterfly) is a chasm in the hand, a spasm of fluttering, suffering from which beauty comes. It is the center of a flower, a nail in the palm, a stem, the crucifixion.

The butterfly is for people who have gone and who also stay.

The butterfly-hand is my changing self, breaking and re-forming, simultaneously fractured and whole.

Note: the butterfly is based on the Blue Metalmark, Lasai Sula (U.S.).

Butterfly, Open Box I and II

charcoal on paper, 17" x 11"

The hermit crab is coming out of its shell; the butterfly out of its box is similar, I suppose. It is funny that it isn't a cocoon. Naturally it would be a cocoon, so a box might be a constraint imposed by a human(s), also different from the traditional butterfly net. The butterflies don't seem like stunning, tranquil wonders, but are full of fractured motion. There is a sense of struggle to keep the wings beating rather than a graceful flutter. The release was hard-won.

Square Prints

Print #1

Print #2

Print #3
Print #4

Print #5

drypoint, chine colle

In these prints, the square is a form and a void in space. It is organic, like the irregular weave of something handwoven, a plane not usually parallel to the picture plane. It has varying degrees of density from image to image. In the first print, the butterfly is entering or exiting the dark square while in the second butterfly print, the butterfly inhabits it. Which world is unknowable, the dark or the light?

Colored prints number three and four are landscapes, atmospheric, and created out of color. Number three is constructed out of slabs of paper giving the sense of monumental scale of Stonehenge and just as bucolic. The fourth print is all about sky and reflections; a white square fades in and out of focus. Its subtle and peaceful qualities are in the vein of Agnes Martin, revered for her simplicity and achievement of sensations of tranquility. She is one painter who knew that less is sometimes more.

Print number five is like Daffodils, Loss, but without the flowers. It is stark but soft, full of contradictions. When I was a teenager, I painted a mural in my bedroom of a split face, one side in color and the other in black/white/grays with the word "paradox" painted above it. It was pretty much the theater comedy and tragedy masks rolled into one. Something of the theme remains in my work despite having left adolescence behind long ago, LONG ago. I would never have been able to make these prints as a teenager. It is not a technical issue but a conceptual one. My work hinges on the idea in combination with materials, process, touch, and perception. There is change, but there is also a strong, yet flexible philosophical undercurrent buoying it all along.

Washington Art Association

16" x 16", oil on canvas, 2006


Butterfly Pelvis/Wild Indigo Dusty Wing


I am having a show at the Washington Art Association in Washington Depot, CT, from June 23-July 22, 2007. The opening reception is Saturday, June 23rd from 4-6pm. The gallery's website is http://www.washingtonart.org/ I expect to hang between fifteen and twenty paintings as well as a few prints. The art association has three galleries and there will be one artist for each space. The other two artists I am showing with are the painter, Kathy Black, and the sculptor, Bob Rivera. The image above will be included in the show and is featured on the announcement. It is rather like Georgia O'Keefe both in symbolism, scale, and paint handling. The pelvis is symbolic of birth as well as death (bone) and the butterfly of life cycles and renewal. The forms fit together in a dynamic way and it was important to me that one did not dominate over the other.
The tension between the green and purple echos the sharp contrast of black and white in the picture.