Still lifes capturing play

AT THE GALLERIES

“During the last 40 years,” poet and art critic John Berger has said,

“transatlantic painting has demonstrated how there is no longer

anything left to mediate and therefore anything left to paint.”

The still life, as an example, has become a sad and droll subject

in contemporary art. The goal isn’t to mediate, but instead to play.

Larry Morace’s enchanting paintings (on view at Greenwood Chebithes

Gallery, 330 N. Coast Highway) repeat the same coffee cups and fruit

in a group of oils on canvas he calls “Once More With Feeling.”

The lighting on each canvas is exactly the same: slanted, early

morning light that creates deep shadows and blazes in the bright

reds, yellows and blues of the spotted ceramic mugs. Four paintings

with the light and composition exactly the same, yet each is

different. Side by side on the wall, their primary simplicity fades

and we begin to see how complex our perception of the world really

is, that we bring to each moment subtle layers of mood, skill and

vision. Their individual and collective effect, as the title

indicates, is affable and warm.

The paintings of Australian Adrian Lockhart (on view at William

Merrill Gallery, 611 S. Coast Highway) are also still life

compositions. They, too, are repetitions of the same bottle, bowl and

vase. But here, each composition is different and singular, and each

interpretation graceful and fine. The canvases are larger, and the

palette is narrow. “Blue Studio and Bowl” is an extreme close-up on a

simple white porcelain bowl, showing only a portion of the whole on a

39 by 26 canvas, making the subject moving and monumental in scale.

Lockhart renders these items in fog blue, faded brown and steel

gray acrylic, making the color more matte, less translucent than oil.

But the dimen- sionality of each object is carefully preserved, and

the extreme simplicity of the composition creates a sense of vast

space and ease around each item.

The stillness of the still life on each of Lockhart’s canvases is

extreme. Here there are no outlines, only places where light bends

away from the object; and the space around the object is as much a

part of the composition as the object itself. The viewer begins to

question the meaning of the mundane, where a bottle or a bowl can be

given such weight and significance.

“Studio Bottle and Sketch” [53 by 39] takes this a step farther by

including the picture-within-the-painting conceit. A rapidly

executed, simple charcoal nude is depicted in the corner of the

composition. The bottle, we know, is transparent; but there is

nothing in it or beyond it except light. The blue glass, the browns

and tans of the table and paper, the human figure itself in the form

of a painting of a drawing, are all abstracted to the level of basic

attributes. Yet each surface is distinct and clear. Lockhart’s still

lifes are graceful and whole, each showing as they do only a fragment

of the artist’s vision.

But to leave representation out of the painting’s vision entirely,

to eliminate form altogether, presents challenges for both the viewer

and the artist. With no recognizable subject, the inheritors of

abstract expressionism rely on provoking a response in the viewer

through the execution of color, thus painting (in Berger’s terms)

nothing.

Eva Carter’s oils on canvas (on view at Marion Meyer, 354 N. Coast

Highway) are successful examples of current interpretations of action

painting. Each of her large canvases is energetic and vital. Their

titles reflect their conceptual basis.

“Enchant” [48 by 60] is full of movement and high drama. The

colors are boldly presented in pure reds ranging to orange, yellow

and green, with generous use of black. There is a sense of conflict

and resolution as the eye moves constantly across the canvas. This is

what happens when red meets yellow, and here yellow meets black. It

is a confident composition, and of constant interest.

“Reassure” [72 by 66] takes this onto a grander scale with a

different palette, mixing ultramarine blues with sky blues and

extreme violets. White and yellow impasto brush work runs down and

off the canvas. All of Carter’s canvases have this same kind of

theater. The patterns of color are similar, but each has a sense of

force and intellect, of individual evocative intent.

Certainly it is true, as Berger implies that there is nothing new

under the sun. What remains are individual interpretations on the

same human perceptions-isolated, hyper-personal perspectives. These

artists, however, do more. They have translated those perceptions

into meaningful experience.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She currently teaches at Saddleback College.