Confluent Dimensions
By Tom Wachunas
“What I mean by 'abstract' is something
which comes to life spontaneously through a gamut of contrasts, plastic at the
same time as psychic, and pervades both the picture and the eye of the
spectator with conceptions of new and unfamiliar elements...” -Marc Chagall
Exhibit: Acrylic
Paintings by Sherri Hornbrook, THROUGH MARCH 2, in the Studio M Gallery of
The Massillon Museum, 121 Lincoln Way East, downtown Massillon. (330)
833-4061 www.massillonmuseum.com
Before walking all
the way into the gallery, stand for a little while just a few feet in, and scan
the whole room. Left to right, right to left or center to peripheries – makes no
difference. Don’t make it an exercise in “picking favorites”, but rather “read”
the whole space. Take its pulse. Feel its heartbeat. IT’S ALIVE.
Next, try seeing
the 21 abstract acrylic paintings on the walls collectively as a visual essay –
or better, a poem - of ebullient, exclamatory nature. Then, consider each
individual painting as an integral yet discrete stanza, constructed around one
or more adjectives, so to speak, stated in the superlative degree.
These poetic “adjectives”
might be manifest as dominant, fluorescently colored shapes and linear elements,
as in Strength; the amoeba-like dark
contour in Protection; or floating
clusters of vibrant, gestural curves of red in Wholeness.
Further still, Sherri Hornbrook is
something of an archaeologist with a remarkably probing and flexible paintbrush.
Her pictures are painterly records of discovery, and otherwise lavish
expositions of entwined visual strata that rise from an intuitive process. Embedded
in many of them, like so many “fossils,” are the layered histories of their
making – transparent and opaque shapes, thick trails of brush marks or ghostly
washes of undulating color that in turn support more substantial, organic
structures.
From the
perspective of iconography, Hornbrook’s statement for the show is friendly to
those viewers who might want to look for identifiable representations. And to
varying degrees, some of her paintings are suggestive of real world imagery –
figurative, botanical, biological and, in a few instances, architectural. But
generally, these aren’t sharply delineated references so much as they’re
fleeting echoes or misty memories.
A particularly
engaging aspect of Holbrook’s technique is her sensitivity to textures and the
reflective qualities of the paint. Many of the images employ a playful
back-and-forth shifting between configurations of glossy and matte finishes.
The resulting spatial tensions create fluctuating dimensionalities within the
picture plane.
With this
collection, Holbrook has laid out a visual gestalt that harmonizes with a
viable definition of art that I often offer to my students of art
appreciation/history: Art is an intentional, human-made response to being
alive.
It’s a sweeping definition, to be sure, but
one which nonetheless fits the tantalizing vitality and scope of Holbrook’s
aesthetic. She’s wholly alive to her perceptions of the world and the capacity
of art to illuminate realities seen and unseen, physical and ethereal, minute
and mighty. For all of the sophisticated pictorial mechanisms at work here,
what’s most exciting is Hornbrook’s commitment to raw spontaneity. Call it a
child-like infatuation with seeing. In
that respect, may she never grow up.
PHOTOS (from top):
Strength; Standstill; Protection;
Gateway; Wholeness
No comments:
Post a Comment