I’ll admit it. I was raised on a late 50’s diet of classics: Ancient Rome and Dutch masters. Rubens and Victorian sentiment. A frosting-heap of Impressionism. As a girl, I gravitated to lush landscapes and ladies in billowing dress. I never thought much of contemporary art. Small allowance made for geometry and no sympathy for the 20th century.Studying art history in college didn’t help. The emphasis stayed on history. (And the main text included not one woman.)
However, along with isolation the pandemic slipped contemporary art into my path. Last spring I started listening weekly to Mark Daniel Nelson. He generously illustrates his composition lectures with recent artists’ work. Suddenly I am dazzled. Diebenkorn and Morandi. Edmond Praybe and Lucy MacGillis. Ken Krewley and Peri Schwartz. Their art, especially their still lifes, stop me in my tracks. I find myself asking, not just How did they do that, but Why does this work?
Extract from Google search for still life Peri Schwartz
Click on that image. Look at a still life. Which one grabs you? What does it say? What’s left unsaid? Where does the artist direct your eye? How do the shapes interact? The colors? What surprises you? What feelings do you get? Why do you linger?
So much conveyed through so little. A lemon, a bowl, a window, a chair. A few colored bottles on a window sill.
The artist uses these to expresses the ineffable. To make us, as Ram Dass said, be here now.
Maybe an analogy to music helps. When you listen to music, the composer, the musicians, have already made choices and done hard work. They don’t play all the notes, any which way. Before you ever hear them, they edit, practice, rewrite, review, so that when they do perform, they can center us in the moment as if it were no work at all. They carry us into a timeless space. We happily enter, again and again.
Somehow a painting does this too. It takes you out of time. Stop, look, and a moment glows. The artist’s effort becomes transparent. The labor, the practice, the failures – all disappear into the resonate NOW. You look and you see. You forget about worries and must-do’s. Instead, for a few moments, you simply exist. In wonder.
We artists were put here to say what matters. Your job is to take what you love and explore it. Deconstruct. Examine. Edit. Expand. Hold up that thing - the lemon, the bowl, the window- that calls you. Let it express the moment. Show your viewer why it matters. Say “Be amazed. Be still. Be here now.”
And they will see.