Goodbye to All That…
Last summer, after many years of living in Bloomington and teaching at Indiana University, my husband and I packed up and left. We could have stayed on after “graduation” but feared becoming ghosts in a company town. It seemed like time for a fresh start and maybe a return. We moved to New York, which was a roundabout move home for both of us, but especially for me, as it is where I grew up. Most of the paintings in this catalog, not all of which are in the show, reflect the last five years spent in Bloomington. They were stressful and anticipatory years as the idea of moving gained traction, the political climate tightened and life’s horizon seemed less distant than it was when we arrived. A certain urgency prevailed.
Already the work, in its new home and untethered from where it was made, encapsulates a specific time and place, starting during COVID and ending with the looming uncertainty of Trump’s return to office. I paint from the daily immediacy of things I see and experience, while incorporating a dose of metaphorical thinking. Paintable motifs originate in habitual encounters, such as the turn into the driveway every day to see the shed with its ever-growing stack of cast-off objects. Metaphor is what allows this encounter to expand, linking elements in the paintings, particularly in the still lifes, and it is what enables me to dream while I am at work on a painting. There is no overt message or narrative, but things fall into place as a painting evolves. A world is created out of the confluence of the empirical reality of what I am looking at, the subconscious reason it matters to me to look at it anyway, and often an underlying sense of irony.
I am attracted to messy motifs. Bloomington was a perfect location for this sensibility. The transitory quality of student life and the tolerance for it that pervade the town allow for many loose ends to develop as part of the character and look of the place. We are now living in a much more manicured, suburban kind of landscape. People take care of their lawns and driveways. We will have to see what will become visually interesting in that.
“Goodbye to All That” is derived from the title of Robert Graves’ book about his experiences growing up in Great Britain, serving in World War I with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Welsh Regiment, and his return from the war. He wrote this book in 1929 when he was leaving England for good to move to Majorca. He was cutting ties. The book is often cited as a great anti-war book, but there is no diatribe; the book is written completely from the perspective of the minutiae of the daily experience of war. There is no critical analysis of why the war is happening, what is taking place on the world stage, or even the larger context of how the war is going. Graves paints a vivid picture, precisely because he avoids any stepping back for reflection and analysis. Any editorializing is embedded in description. I admire this focused, hard looking, that reminds me of the way a perceptual painter sees his motif.
