OCR Text |
Show Clarke blazes trail with 'maximalist' style ihlJt, n i y fi'x Jj&'Z: jhr.t4 k i V ILV W 1 r?)Sm$SJ III 1; ma ' " r 5j f?t& i, M by Rick Brough Looking at Jeanne L Clarke's paintings, the first thought that comes to mind is "My canvas runneth over." In her exhibit at the Kimball Art Center, the setting in her paintings is almost always the same two or three people sitting at a bounteous dinner table heaped with fruit or flowers or food containers. Perhaps another room appears behind it. But within that setting there are dozens of objects, patterns and planes of colors jostling with each other, blending together or balancing. But her intent, she told the Record, is to show that within her thickly populated canvases, there are objects and elements that relate to each other, that tend to be a group once the. eye grasps them. This concept she constantly refers to. with the word "family." She said, "There is a harmonious group of shapes in space. The painting alludes to families of colors or families of containers or families of shapes. The biggest statement that could be made is the family. It is a very busy, complex thing, not only to organize but to keep healthy." Just as the family is a basic unit in the world, she suggested, the family grouping of objects in her painting is the glue that keeps the frame from dissolving into a jumble of objects. In addition to this, she is attempting to have her painting articulate a system of symbols. Even something so simple as the containers on her painted dinner tables express something. When a container is open, Clarke said, she usually has it overflowing an allusion to the age-old idea of the "cup running over." A closed container, she said, could be like the individual personality, not completely knowable. to others. "I have a running battle with my son. I think I know him intimately, but he says, 'No, you don't.' " Her paintings are awash with patterns. Some are geometrical a reference to the masculine, she said.' Other are floral patterns the feminine. "They intermingle, just as. . in life," she said. She also attempts to incorporate ' "two-dimensionality" the idea that the objects are closer to the viewer or further away. But how do you do this in a painting bustling with shapes? One way is to confound your visual expectation, she said. One expects, for instance, that the background of a painting is at the upper part of the canvas and objects there are pictured as small, or far away. So Clarke will place a large object at the top of the painting, pushing it toward you. Clarke and her family came to Utah from Connecticut. (Then, she painted mostly portraits.) She obtained a Master of Fine Arts from BYU in 1979 and began teaching there in 1980. For the past four years, she has been working at her style, which she calls "maxim-alism." "maxim-alism." As far as she knows, no one else is attempting it. She is not always successfully. "I've gotten a lot of disasters. I have one canvas so heavy with color I can't lift it." Her style, she feels, demands a large canvas. She sketches out the details for a painting beforehand, but even then that doesn't reliably indicate how it will look on the larger canvas. If she revises, it can take a whole week to rework a passage on a painting, she said. "It's totally immersing to make something not only attractive to look at, but challenging with all these allusions. Sometimes I have to leave the house to get away from (the patterns). I have to do something physical like running or gardening." After the Kimball exhibit, she hopes to travel to New York to interest a gallery in her style. "We'll walk up and down the streets and see what happens," she said. Her experiment is massive, both in physical size and in artistic ambition! But she loves it, she said. "If I had to go back to portrait painting, I'd wither and die." The exhibit of paintings by Clarke will be displayed at the Kimball Art Center throneh May 2. photo by Nan Chalat Her paintings are awash with patterns. Some are geometrical-a reference to the masculine, she said. Other are floral patterns the feminine. |