October 2024

Myth, Cadogan Gallery, Milan

As a painter, I have recently shifted my focus from nature and an abstracted, internalized landscape, to a new investigation of shape and form. For the last few years, I have been interested in re-engaging line in my painting, bringing its energy to a more defined and less atmospheric space. Both new impulses can be seen in the new works in Cadogan’s exhibition Myth.

Myths help explain our nature, rites and experiences in the world. I agree with what Mark Rothko said: “[I am] dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times.” The painting titled Myth, suggests a stone head hovering above a somewhat playful landscape, influenced by Aztec sculpture I have studied in Mexico City.

My work often refers to the process of painting.  The game of chance is also an element in my approach.  I value evocation, traces, imprints, over depiction. How a Poem Begins shows fragments of landscape with palm trees interrupting the planes of color, drawn in and through shades of turquoise, aqua and blue. Sovereign and This Place, This Time are colorful landscapes with similar structure, both emphasizing drawing, bisecting the horizon line within the painted fields.

Shelter, also showing the drawn line, has an enclosed form, almost like arms and sky are folding in the central shape.  Henry Moore drawing and sculpture have been an influence in my work since girlhood, especially the Elephant Skull Etchings. Here there is an echo of that enormous form, which I drew from directly in my teens.

The Mystery of Asking suggests an ancient adobe city; Georgia’s Door also invokes an architectural site. Tracing Time and Green Lake both can disorient, bringing a topsy turvy bird’s eye swoop and turn to the landscape. The works in the exhibition are abstractions that have been evolving to include these more defined shapes and references to mythic form and the city.