Kitchen Sink Gallery
I have been thinking about combining the information I get from plein air painting and personal mental interpretations of a scene. Montana is in fire season with a thick haze in the sky and higher than normal temperatures. It is a good time to paint inside, take some risks and explore stories and ideas that I would like to visualize. The museums and galleries I used to visit for inspiration are far away. Yes, there certainly are sources online but I miss viewing paintings on the wall. Lately the next best thing has been art postcards and pages torn from the art magazines I’ve collected over the years. I usually pin art reproductions above the kitchen sink and look at them while doing the dishes. At this time I have 5 images that are in my sink gallery culled from my resource file. These current choices may help me to clarify new directions or concepts I want to revisit. I’m sharing this compilation, which offers clues and awareness of where my intuitive self is residing outside the hustle of life. The mixed media collage above (Landscape Study, 2019, mixed media collage, 11” x 14”) was finished 2 years ago and I relate it to the images below.
Ron Milewicz, Sugar Maple Tree, 2018, graphite on paper, 13.5” x 18”
Milewicz did a series of these drawings, which I saw at the Studio School. I love the play of values and clearly he’s interested in the patterns created by light. Unusual to see that tree trunk dead center.
Stanley Lewis, Houses on Jekyll Island, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 21”x34”
Lewis is known to paint outside from perception. Mostly landscapes with built-up layers of paint. I got this postcard for a show he had at Betty Cunningham.
Janet Fish, Red and Green Dishes Monarda, 2007,oil on canvas, 60”x36”
Janet Fish has always inspired me. Her interest in how light reflects on surfaces create this over all connectedness to the objects and even the landscape in this painting.
Stuart Davis, Pad No4, 1947, oil on canvas, 14”x18”
Stuart Davis did this study as part of a larger project at the Brooklyn Museum. This image is taken from a brochure I got at the museum. This painting is abstract but Davis used preexisting forms from life to get there.
Henri Matisse, The Desert: Harmony in Red, 1908, oil on canvas, 5’11”x7’3”
This is probably the most famous Matisse painting. I never tire of seeing it. I enjoy the sense of all over pattern and of course his color and spatial relationships. While the window exists there is no sense of light and its effect on nature.
What do you think about this grouping and do you have thoughts about how they relate to each other?
patc
July 16, 2021 at 9:24 amthe depth and repetition of vertical patterns in the milewicz remind me instantly of your old painting of the moose in the forest – still one of my favorites of yours. i agree, the dominant centered tree trunk is shocking. love the transparency and color gradations in the glass in the janet fish piece. that must be REALLY hard to do!
i’d never have thought to put these together. to me the first 3 are all about light, shadow, density & transparency, while the latter 2 feel almost stunningly flat by comparison, dominated by pattern. the 4th one confuses me. shows what a literalist i am.
Alison Chandler
July 17, 2021 at 9:07 pmNancy, Good to know you are working inside during this time of fire and hazy air. Not to mention the grizzly bears. I love this post and agree that the simplest things–reproductions pinned over a kitchen sink for contemplation–can inspire us. In a photograph of Bonnard’s studio you can see the reproductions he pinned to his wall, along with metallic papers, such as candy wrappers, which he liked for their sparkle. The reddish-green colors you use in your piece are echoed in all the color pieces. Your piece and the first three pieces, I think of as being grounded in the natural world and the last two as grounded in abstraction.