New Bedford Museum – February 9 through May 22, 2011
February 11, 2011
When Joan Backes, the Curator of Vault Series at The New Bedford Museum contacted me about exhibiting my paintings there, I was very interested in doing so. Your city has long held an important place in my imagination. New Bedford in the 1840’s was home to two of America’s most influential artists, the writer Herman Melville and the painter Albert Pinkham Ryder. Both are known for works that reveal a human consciousness that is inextricably merged with the “natural” world. According to this Transcendentalist vision each of us is bound in ongoing and dynamic interchange with the surrounding earth, water and air. I am one of many artists whose work is deeply influenced by this way of seeing, by these two sons of New Bedford. As a painter, Ryder has been an early and consistent source of inspiration. The powerful abstractness of his figurative paintings shows me that a “realistic” image is not enough.
One must see how an image is placed on the rectangle of the canvas and how the paint itself appears in order to fully access an authentic iteration of that image. Melville, the writer challenged me to look closely and hard at the world and it’s creatures. His ability to impart his perceptions in a clear and accessible language challenged me to do the same. More than anything, reading Melville has helped me throughout those many “dark drizzly Novembers in my soul” that are familiar to any mature artist. I am so pleased to be a part of this exhibition series.
A few words about the paintings in this exhibition: While the portraits are focused on individual faces, the landscape elements that surround the figure provide essential clues about her or his interiority. Without clouds or foliage, without a specific proportion of figure to ground, without a sense of light or dark, there could be no feeling to these figures. The night paintings also seek to evoke not only the appearance of a place but also the way it can feel to see in the dark, to be alone in it looking at the colors of night. The flower paintings are detailed and intimate arrangements of a single species. These careful arrangements of wild plants are meant to suggest a “letter from the world”, a moment of formalized nature. Although the blossoms are cut and becoming dry, these paintings preserve something of their last vivid coloration and patterning.