Tracing
the Ancestry of Light |
This is an
architecture of aesthetics. And if you go digging
deep enough, you’ll find out that some of the basic
roots of contemporary painting find origins in the earth
from which they were borne.
And that’s
where Felice Sharp begins in her paintings.
This tracing
of bloodlines and tree tines began in the south of France,
near the Provence region, where Sharp sought the origins
of paint in the medieval pigments burrowing there. In
an attempt to return the inspiration and method of her own
work to her familial European roots, the remnants of the
earth in the French countryside were Sharp’s starting
points.
Sharp
works in a modern descendant of the encaustic method in
her painting process. The pigments from the European
ground are given what the artist Joseph Cornell call a “second
life” when describing the found objects in his boxes. The
particles of earth, having had a duration of service as
they were naturally intended on the other side of the sea,
are now given a second life as incorporated values and
temperatures of color which themselves are planted into
the wax and canvas of Sharp’s painting. The
method itself is not new—the Old Masters populated
the palettes in much the same way. What makes this
work contemporary is the fact that the same pigments now
speak a new language—if there could ever be a universal
European language of color, Sharp’s use of them would
be an evolved dialect.
As
color itself exists only on account of the presence of
light’s various wavelengths, that task of light is
given free reign here. Beginning with a raw, unprimed
canvas, Sharp begins with her pigments and water-based
and lays down the initial form of the work. At it is here
that the task of light, figuratively and literally, begins
to have its way with the work.
The
wax used in this “encaustic process” is mixed
with varnish to hold form. This serves the physical
purpose of allowing the wax to adhere better to the canvas,
but also provides the frozen droplets of wax, the flow
of wax over the surface, the memory of form preserved in
motion of the wax as it takes to the canvas. Wax
itself is used as a medium here, into which Sharp mixes
in some of her pigments. So on top of the water-base,
the wax is a contender for the work’s individual
voice, its individual message or storyline. It is
that quality of the wax, its weaving and rolling shapes,
that allow for the further harnessing of light’s
effects. Depending on the angle of the viewer, the
way physical light appears onto the wax can cause anything
from dreamy reflections on shapes that remind us of lakes
and forests, to sunlight peering like firm curiosities
over the faint appearance of grand arches and buttressed
cathedrals. Sharp’s world is one that conjures
in the audience a hazy familiarity that finds its elements
in the stuff of sleep.
After
experiencing a self-imposed deja vu from gazing into Sharp’s
work, it is not too difficult to be swayed into seeing
reality itself as abstraction when seen with a true-eye. The
landscapes in Sharp’s paintings are almost lethargic
swatches of brush strokes combined with the more sensual
topography of the wax layers. These strokes are the
painted representations of light and dark throughout the
canvas. If one were to gaze out at a mass of trees,
or early morning fog on the lake, those real physical objects
of stones, branches, the streets from one’s childhood,
one sees in that line of sight, environments that seem
to take no definite form despite their reality.
The
reality of that perception of a real environment touched
by different intensities of light convince the viewer that
in our real world, routine sights we witness everyday are
truly uncertain tangibles. Sharp does not offer that
physicality of the objects to our hands either—instead,
in her paintings, she offer us faded daguerreotypes of
our own perceptions that are tinged with personal experience,
personal memory.
Her
work is a visual journal that transports the audience in
the style of a family story passed from grandmother to
grandchild, a yellowing tome of a scrapbook discovered
in the family library. We are led to recall our own
ancestry of memories, our own personal experiences and
passing remembrances, all laid our here like a meticulous
excavation of modern art. And in that light, our
own original hum the most warmly, and brightly.
Austin S. Lin
2001
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