There is something profoundly disorientating about Jock Hunter's photograph of Tossa de Mar, Spain. The slight blur and the shape of the trees give the scene an almost dizzying stilled movement. The piercing, overexposed dots of light not only dazzle but provide a light-source that gives the illusion that the entire piece is staged - perhaps even a miniature. And, with its Grimshaw-esque moonlit sky and its Cezanne-like tumble of abstracted buildings, one would be forgiven for mistaking the image for an oil painting. Even when considered in photographic terms, there is distinct uncertainty as to whether the piece is a snap taken on a hot Spanish evening or a carefully rendered sample of the unique and inspiring Spanish night. In summary, Hunter's photograph seems as urgently rendered as it is engineered and we, the viewers, cannot resist its spellbinding mystery.
LIAM WILKINSON
3 Lights Gallery, Modern Haiga, Notebook
I MADE THE RAIN by Penny Goring
“I make odd machines I call stories. I make odd machines I call pictures. I make odd machines I call sculptures. I make,” says Penny Goring – painter, sculptor, writer and creator of all sorts of everything.
This dedication to artistic expression is reminiscent of what the New York Times said of the poet John Ashbery: “[he] is a collector within his poems, assembling curiosities and profundities, jokes, confessions, tricks, inventories of objects, the names of small-time actors, the names of films, the names of flowers, and so on.” – a description that could very easily be applied to the last half-century of visual art.
Penny Goring is very much a part of that world – she is an artist whose work, and whose artistic philosophy, is firmly embedded in a willingness to let everything in. “Cinema usherette, deep-sea diver - I'm interested in how we think,” she remarked in a recent interview. I Made The Rain is a collage by someone whose thought process and expression is suited to the piecing together of life’s indiscriminate offerings. In the tradition of Schwitters, Hamilton, Blake and Rivers, Goring offers us another piece of her existence, made entirely of pieces of her existence.
Surely this is where the many branches of the arts become entangled? Whether with word or paint, paper or stone, we are expressing ourselves by cutting and sticking, no matter what "odd machine" we wind up building.
More about Penny Goring and her work can be found online at Twitter and Temporary Passport.
LIAM WILKINSON
3 Lights Gallery, Modern Haiga, Notebook
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Winter 2010
BARN DOOR by Stephen Craig Rowe
“Space is only as deep as one makes it,” writes Stephen Craig Rowe at his website Painting Studio – a remark that plays over and over in the viewer’s mind when looking at the work of this artist and poet.
While Thomas’s Under Milk Wood is a pulsating work, permeated with images from the dreams of its characters, its setting is a small, serene Welsh village. Similarly, in Rowe’s Barn Door, one may sense unrest, but the turbulent nature of this piece, with its bold, rusty reds and sharp blacks and whites, seems to be performing against a quiet, almost tranquil backdrop. It may put one in mind of the scars left by time on an old door – the violence of rust on metal or rot in wood – but it would seem that Rowe cannot disguise his own love, or even longing, for peace and tranquility.
Perhaps this is why his website, as it appears on one's screen, is tenderly backed by a gentle folk tune. Rowe's work reminds us that life may be a struggle, perforated now and again by strife and loss, but standing back from it for a short time may reveal a quiet beauty in what many would perceive as disorder and confusion.
LIAM WILKINSON
3 Lights Gallery, Modern Haiga
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Fall 2009
PENZAI by Francisco
Still a major branch of Chinese popular arts, the creation of miniature
landscapes via the potting of dwarfed trees is now a familiar sight in the
Western world. Penzai translates as ‘plant in a pot’ and in Francisco’s piece,
entitled ‘Penzai’, the miniature tree is set against the light and shade of the
deep purple background, creating in itself a vivid, abstract landscape.
The shape and detail of the plant, almost caught in a quiet explosion of earthy
colour, crossing the threshold between the two contrasting shades of the
background, is as expressive as Pollock’s approach to his canvas. The central
form of the tree is reminiscent of Joan Mitchell’s brush work, as are the
purples, reds and greens that give this piece its unique ambience. However, the
‘action’ in this work, the movement and the articulation is the work of nature
itself – but a nature that is, thanks to the art of Penzai, a collaboration
between man and the natural world.
Francisco, originally from Venezuela, is a resident of Asheville, North Carolina. Whether he's painting (oil, acrylic, etc.), sketching, designing a home, or taking photographs, he enjoys the creative process. His work can be seen and purchased at his blog, One A Day, where the goal is to produce and publish a unique piece daily.
LIAM WILKINSON