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Floribundus
by Vanessa Conte
The defined image of a landscape we once knew blurs at the edges and distorts over time. The rolling hills of summers past become greener or more faded, and the boisterous city block from our childhood becomes tamer or more daunting the more we recall it from our memory. The artists in this month's exhibition compose landscapes that exist somewhere on the fringe of our recollections, where a tree can be a bird, or an eye can be an ocean.
Featuring work by Catherine Ramey, Dorothy Stewart and Mitchell Rosenzweig.
Catherine Ramey
The process of creating the work itself is what holds most significance for Catherine Ramey. Ramey's process is not predetermined; rather it is an emotional and spiritual consideration of movement, mortality and rebirth. Ramey builds her compositions with layers of oil paint or gouache until the image dissolves into abstraction. While she is painting, the artist repeats a phrase in her head that she will meditate on. These groups of words vary from simple to complex, such as "field light" or "resolves in shifting containment."
Fecundity #17 (2000)
Catherine Ramey Ramey's Fecundity Series best illustrates her gradual method of painting, and reinforces the meaning of her imagery. Each painting is a portrayal of flowers from her fruitful garden in upstate New York. This organic subject suits the title of the series, Fecundity, which means intellectual and physical fertility. The clarity of the flowers dissipates as the artist drifts into her thoughts, and the work becomes rich with paint. "I start with a form, but the form is no more or less important than the feeling that surrounds it and the deeper, more enduring intangible, that cradles that feeling."
Fecundity Series (1998)
Catherine Ramey Ramey's landscapes are not ruminations on a physical place, but metaphorical tableaus of her memory. They are recordings of her creative process, composed from "layers and layers of maneuvers, one gesture colliding with another until their interactions make something worthwhile."
Convergence #2 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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PaintingsDIRECT: Looking at your portfolio it looks as if you like to work in series. Can you please list the various series featured on PaintingsDIRECT and tell us what they represent?
Catherine Ramey: The titles of the series are words or phrases that evoke broader meanings or meditative longings. "Fecundity" refers to fruitfulness, lushness, or profound fertility. "Convergence" is a coming or drawing together. "Earth plot" has the smell of newly dug soil in it and "Mother's Song" is connected to memory and departure. "Field Light" is about rhythm and radiance. |
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Fecundity #15 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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Taconic Series #5 (1994)
Catherine Ramey
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PaintingsDIRECT: Please explain how you create and start a new series? Do you think of a theme first and than start drawing or do the themes of the series appear as you work?
Catherine Ramey: Often a word or segment of a poem occurs to me as the work is forming. The gouache paintings resolve themselves more quickly than the oils and usually lead the way into the next series. |
PaintingsDIRECT: Where do you get the inspiration for your artworks? Do you paint from imagination or from specific scenes that strike you?
Catherine Ramey: Sometimes, I will make a series of sketches from observation but the finished paintings are never a direct rendering. In the studio, the gouaches and oils become lyrical metaphors. They contain a convergence of linked relationships: the still and demanding afternoon light on the lower garden and the deep and awkward letting go of my aging mother; my daughter's consistent and ineffable joy. The beginnings of a painting are an amalgam of memories, a shaft of light, a shadow, a tender remembrance of the day. I gather and return to these moments of emotional impact as the paintings evolve.
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Mother's Song #4 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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Convergence #2 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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PaintingsDIRECT: You obviously like red. Any reason for this color to be so often present in your work?
Catherine Ramey: I think about creating a balance of tension in the color combinations. The various tonalities of red are certainly sensually evocative. Once something is laid down, a stratum of building begins. Adjusting a color tone or an edge, again and again. Sometimes the traces remain as a pentimento. I work the surface with various implements and mediums to create a physical density and luminosity.
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PaintingsDIRECT: What or who has had the most influence on your art?
Catherine Ramey: Chardin, Morandi, and the mid-thirteenth century Chinese painter, Mokkei are inspiring in their potent approach to subject. |
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Field Light #17 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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Meadow Song #6 (2000)
Catherine Ramey
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PaintingsDIRECT: What do you want the viewers to get out of seeing your artworks?
Catherine Ramey: I would like the viewers to experience this mobile and fluid imagery as a motif for spiritual and psychological being. The form is no more or less important than the feeling that surrounds it and the deeper and more enduring intangible that cradles that feeling.
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