Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Ania Gola-Kumor was
insistent that a phone interview would not be enough to truly
understand her work--“I just don't think
people can see me without my painting around me”--so rather, we
skyped. Immigrating some thirty years ago from Eastern Europe, where
she was classically trained in the arts since childhood, Ania uses
her paintings to express herself when words aren't enough. And while
there was no need for her to be self-conscious about her
grammatically perfect, albeit musically accented English, I did bless
the technological innovators for providing me with a means of
actually seeing into Kumor's colorful world.

When considering what I could possibly
write about for this blog, I headed to the quiet gallery basement in
search of some inspiration amongst the canvases stored below.
Flipping through canvas after canvas of dreamy colors and idyllic
scenes, I came to an abrupt halt as I came across one of Kumor's
magnificently massive canvasses, immediately entranced by the
intensity and power of each intentional stroke. Kumor is humble and
reluctant about these paintings that so enamored me, feeling somehow
that they are unfinished even in their completeness—desiring to
pour even more of her heart and vision onto the canvas in layers and
layers of color and feeling that make her paintings so raw and juicy.

But in Kumor's adept hands, a painting
might never be finished. “I have to paint. If I don't have a
painting to paint, I repaint over finished canvases”. She explains
her compulsion to paint as a need to express her emotions, without
which she would go crazy. In America where she originally came as a
political refuge, where speaking English (her third language) is the
norm, it is easy to see how words could not be enough. Truly and
openly communicating one's emotions in a way that in honest is nearly
impossible in any language--language is fallible to express that
which is most essential to our souls.

Her paintings are an attempt to capture
the feeling of a moment. They are abstract aerial landscapes--not so
much that they are one refracted image of a physical place, rather,
that they are the collective memory of the color and emotion of being
in that space. Since coming to Colorado, her artistic palette has
evolved to fit the landscapes she sees here telling a new story—the
reds of the rock, the yellows of the sky, the black of the shadows
where the two former meet.

The other aspect Kumor attributes to
her evolution as an artist in the past twenty years has been her
children. Literally, the persistent demands of raising children
forced her to reevaluate how she was able to create art. “I didn't
have time to wait until I had the courage—I just had to do it.
Bolder, faster, more spontaneous.” Her paintings speak with strokes
of power, colors of emotion, a voice that calls strongly out for all
to come and listen to what it has to share. Her artistic vision is
no longer soft-spoken or shy, it is a declaration of her world and
how she chooses to exist within it.

Friday, June 8, 2012

A few weeks ago, I
had the opportunity to attend the premier of the gallery's Mel Strawn
exhibition. Mel Strawn is fifty shades of awesome. He looks like he
could be your kindly, white-haired grandfather, but bets are that
your grandfather is not nearly as cool as this guy—an artist
creating masterful works for more than half a century.

Strawn is ever an
innovator--and it evident in his almost experimental pieces of
art—which play with lines, with shapes and colors, and with light
and darkness. Paintings like “Genie”, “Negentropy” and
“Series Last”were
part of a fourteen year artistic odyssey of investigation and
invention—using only four shapes he created perfectly chaotic yet
contained and restrained structure compositions. Strawn explained
the process of painting these complex canvases to me as “made by
probability and chance”-- highlighting the mathematical
intentionality of his shape experiments, but moreover, that these
pieces are a reflection of the nature of experiments in and of
themselves—delving into the unknown and unpredictable, unsure of
all possible outcomes.

While
his work is intricate, daring, and beautiful, I am drawn to the
essential simplicity behind Strawn's works, breaking the way we
perceive our space into it's essential pieces. Four shapes are the
building blocks of the world he creates on a canvas, like a scientist
breaking down every known substance of the universe into a periodic
table of elements.
His more recent works use prints and solar exposure (in the vein of
old fashioned photography) to create tangled webs of illusions (and
allusions as in “Vulcan's Forge”).

My
personal favorite in the exhibition is Strawn's “Tree Stump”,
drawn to the romantic notions surrounding its creation. Noticing
that I was particularly drawn to this piece, Strawn told me the
paintings story: In 1966, Stawn and his wife were living in an
ancient manor house in the French countryside. While it was a
beautiful, esoteric place to inhabit, it also lacked certain
seemingly basic amenities—such as heat. Seeing as it was winter
and the cold was pressing down upon them in the drafty old house,
Strawn was constantly collecting wood to fuel the simple stone
fireplace. He started making sketches of the wood pieces he
encountered, this stump being one of the many that filled their
hearth that winter. Perhaps the most aesthetically diverse from the
rest of the collection, it is also the earliest of his works
represented in the gallery.

And
while I may have been quick to identify a favorite, Strawn is more
reluctant. His philosophy on his works? “They're like kids. I
have to love them all...Or hate them all given the day.”

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Faces in the Spotlight by Sandra Phillips

Sandra Phillips Gallery artists Irene Delka McCray and Margaret Kasahara have been chosen to participate in the group exhibit “Faces, Places and Spaces” at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. A face is the primary embodiment of identity—it is what we present to the world. One's face is like our implicit calling card, the first and most recognizable aspect of one's being. How we choose to paint and portray our faces is how we share the stories of our selves—our emotions, our personalities, our roles. McCray and Kasahara will be featured in the “Faces”portion of the exhibition. Located in the main floor of the gallery, this show goes beyond the traditional portrait show focusing on the face, the quintessential expression of humanity. The exhibit features the flawless technical painting skill of Irene Delka McCray articulating universal themes within the human condition. Acclaimed painter Margaret Kasahara uses the lightness of kitsch and humor to explore the heavy topics of stereotypes and personal identity. Her colorful and powerful images pull from Japanese and American pop culture.