2012 SUMMER SHOW at THREE PINES STUDIO and GALLERY
"Riddles and Constructs"
New paintings by Carol C Spaulding
July 21-31, 2012
Artist reception July 21, 2-7 pm
Three Pines Studio and Gallery
5959 W Levering Road
Cross Village, Michigan 49723
231.526.9447
..............................................
New paintings by Carol C Spaulding
July 21-31, 2012
Artist reception July 21, 2-7 pm
Three Pines Studio and Gallery
5959 W Levering Road
Cross Village, Michigan 49723
231.526.9447
..............................................
Summer 2011 Inaugural Exhibit at the Oliver Art Center, Frankfort, MI
CAROL C SPAULDING'S ELEMENTAL LYRICS
essay by Holly Wren Spaulding
. . . I said, "I am an artist," which I won't take back, because it's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. —Vincent Van Gogh, letter to his brother, Theo, 3-12 May, 1882
When a painting does not declare a subject we can recognize as a vase, odalisque, or fox hunting party, what is it? The materiality of the pigments, the quality of light pouring through gallery windows, how it reflects or is absorbed, warms or cools as the sky changes; the brushwork, the color, and texture—these elements convey something else. Is it an impression? Sensation? Emotion? And yet some of us will stand before a painting wondering: What is it? We cling to titles. Incandescent. Inter-coastal. Sometimes They Were in Cahoots.
By force of habit, we look for clues, consoled by the fact that geometry signals something architectural. And doesn't that swath of color recall the lake? We search for what John Updike called "ghosts of subject matter". The mind resists or is enchanted. But what if we begin by just looking? Can we meet the painting on its own terms and see something else, something apart from our expectations? What do we perceive?
It is no small thing to enter into a mind-space in which we are made to feel the sensuality of color. Pure color. And now you see the artist's brush—the frolicking stroke, the pirouetting line, the built-up texture where the surface was painted over and over. Gush of yellow. Memory of late light. Do we not go to art in order to be moved by such elemental things? To leave the every-day mind that seeks recognition, stability, certainty?
Other work in this exhibition includes floral gouaches and lush landscapes which we recognize both for their subject and style. Maybe this is not so much because we can declare what we behold as dune or poppy. Maybe it is because paintings like these remind us of things we know but too easily forget: to really see, to take pleasure, to pause in the presence of beauty, find awe in nature. Remain alive to the world. For this reason and others, my mother's still lifes lead me to question if this is the correct term of what we find on the canvas. Cut flowers are animated by her brush, provided a heightened effervescence, the airborne lightness of birds. These paintings move, sway, tremble, and reach beyond the canvas. They crowd one another ecstatically. No, these cacophonies of color and line are not dead nature but instead are alive, and affirm life.
"All art constantly aspires to the quality of music," said essayist and critic Walter Pater, and it is in such a mode that my mother paints. There is a lyric tunefulness here. These paintings hum and hold, vibrate and continue.
—Holly Wren Spaulding, 2011
essay by Holly Wren Spaulding
. . . I said, "I am an artist," which I won't take back, because it's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. —Vincent Van Gogh, letter to his brother, Theo, 3-12 May, 1882
When a painting does not declare a subject we can recognize as a vase, odalisque, or fox hunting party, what is it? The materiality of the pigments, the quality of light pouring through gallery windows, how it reflects or is absorbed, warms or cools as the sky changes; the brushwork, the color, and texture—these elements convey something else. Is it an impression? Sensation? Emotion? And yet some of us will stand before a painting wondering: What is it? We cling to titles. Incandescent. Inter-coastal. Sometimes They Were in Cahoots.
By force of habit, we look for clues, consoled by the fact that geometry signals something architectural. And doesn't that swath of color recall the lake? We search for what John Updike called "ghosts of subject matter". The mind resists or is enchanted. But what if we begin by just looking? Can we meet the painting on its own terms and see something else, something apart from our expectations? What do we perceive?
It is no small thing to enter into a mind-space in which we are made to feel the sensuality of color. Pure color. And now you see the artist's brush—the frolicking stroke, the pirouetting line, the built-up texture where the surface was painted over and over. Gush of yellow. Memory of late light. Do we not go to art in order to be moved by such elemental things? To leave the every-day mind that seeks recognition, stability, certainty?
Other work in this exhibition includes floral gouaches and lush landscapes which we recognize both for their subject and style. Maybe this is not so much because we can declare what we behold as dune or poppy. Maybe it is because paintings like these remind us of things we know but too easily forget: to really see, to take pleasure, to pause in the presence of beauty, find awe in nature. Remain alive to the world. For this reason and others, my mother's still lifes lead me to question if this is the correct term of what we find on the canvas. Cut flowers are animated by her brush, provided a heightened effervescence, the airborne lightness of birds. These paintings move, sway, tremble, and reach beyond the canvas. They crowd one another ecstatically. No, these cacophonies of color and line are not dead nature but instead are alive, and affirm life.
"All art constantly aspires to the quality of music," said essayist and critic Walter Pater, and it is in such a mode that my mother paints. There is a lyric tunefulness here. These paintings hum and hold, vibrate and continue.
—Holly Wren Spaulding, 2011
