Art Lies, Volume 31, Summer 2001 Page: 69
84 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Susan Harrington
Small Passions
GALVESTON ARTS CENTER
GALVESTON
Cheryl Kelley
Plane Painting
NEW GALLERY
Susan Harrington
HOUSTON Nefertiti and Horse, 1995
Mixed media/ duraline
by Ileana Marcoulesco Courtesy of the artistCheryl Kelley's title suggests painting as
skin. This body of work appears in part as
an exorcism of childhood terrors pro-
voked by eighteen wheelers, railroad cars,
and other freight giants, since threatening
doorlike forms provide the structure of
many of her canvases. In keeping with
Abstract Expressionist tradition, Kelley is
intolerant of construction and depth.
There is an androgynous assertiveness
about her well-proportioned designs,
which are coupled with delicate scratches
and cryptic shapes encrusted within the
color fields in the manner of Mark
Rothko or Clyfford Still.
With Kelley we face an unambiguous
mapping of passion. Wide brushstrokes
yield explosive plenitude within the classi-
cal arena of geometric boundaries. Here,
proportions between stripe and field are
instinctively yet faultlessly drawn.
Occasionally, a black-and-white piece fea-
tures an expressive blotch of darker black-
on-black, or, as in Divining, an earth tone.
Crisscrossed into receding parallelograms,
they suggest any number of residual
images subsumed under the stark disci-
pline of the imaginary. A striking greyish-
blue lords over four horizontal boards in
Lift, demonstrating that Kelley is also atease with modernist geometry, from bands
of elementary vibrant colors horizontally
layered on wood panels to arrangements of
perfect circles.
Susan Harrington's gift lies in her
ability to build, through successive delicate
touches, collages of barely suggested,
disparate images whose magnetic force
derives from their commemorative, cryp-
tic, or private fixations. Yet we cannot help
but share in her not so minor passions:
horses, rabbits, and birds, gracefully drawn
or presented as silhouettes. Harrington
displays an unfinished process that
enlivens the real space-time of perception
by relying on vanishing forms whose
openness fades into a memory-like mist.
Colored mittens, cut out in felt, are affixed
to the bottom of the vellum sheet of Four
Red Hand Mittens, perhaps as an "I" who
speaks, in a childish, poetic voice, of a past
about to be buried. Evanescent profiles,
miniaturized portraits of children and
young women, huge pieces of fruit, veg-
etables, leaves or other unproblematic,
natural elements peek from under the
thick vellum, fastened with tape that
allows them to swing freely into the air.
Everywhere in her work hands stand
as witness to what the artist does orI;
wishes to do. There are open, fragile,
elegant hands, as well as shadow hands,
projecting, Chinese-lantern style, silhou-
ettes of rabbits, horses, or wolves. These
are emblems of what hands can create in
matters of illusion, but they also command
the grand magic of the infantile imagi-
nation. There is room enough in
Harrington's art for a true anthology of
hands, maybe even a chiromancer's quest,
yet horses occupy center stage in this show.
Wrenchingly sweet profiles, they are
drawn in blurred charcoal. Near Nefertiti
and Horse's huge equine profile crouches a
tiny female figure, representing the four-
teenth century BC Queen of Egypt. She is
obviously in an ecstatic mood.
Layering means different things to
each of these artists. Working in oils,
Kelley condenses images and agglutinates
emotions into her densely encrypted sur-
faces. Harrington's airy sheets of vellum,
marked, masked, and enfolded in a variety
of mixed mediums, shows life-memories,
only to let them later unwind away from
the surface. Both artists deal with memo-
ries retrieved and displayed in seductive
yet contrasting fashions. The content of
each artist's work is literally undecipher-
able, powerfully connoted, but sparingly
denoted. One might hope that both will
take a step into the morphologies of the
world-at-large, beneficially inflecting the
present tense subjective of their current
visions. But for now Harrington and
Kelley's singular achievement is their snug
adherence to the inner self. This translates
into authenticity, which is readily accessi-
ble in their signature pieces.
Cheryl Kelley
Lift
Courtesy of New Gallery
ARTL!ES Summer 2001 69i
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Kalil, Susie. Art Lies, Volume 31, Summer 2001, periodical, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228061/m1/71/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .