Illuminated Brush Strokes
Pamela A. Popeson
You know
the feeling you get standing under a star-studded night sky where all at once
you’re struck by the overwhelming enormity of life and the unsubstantial
fragility of your own puny existence? Where you want to weep at the
inconceivable beauty of life? Well, that is the feeling you get standing in a
room surrounded by artist Sky Pape’s new works on paper at the June Kelly
Gallery.
In the
exhibit entitled “Behind the Seen: Saturated Ink Drawings”, there are ten
larger mounted pieces and a number of smaller drawings and you want to take in
everything these pictures have to give. It’s inspiring and illuminating and
then somehow everything turns and you’re the vulnerable one. Besides the
universal truths, there are personal truths being revealed and they are not
just Pape’s: they are yours, too.
While her
past work has often reflected an Eastern sensibility, for these new drawings
she uses Japanese hake brushes, that are from five to seven inches across, to
saturate sheets of kozo paper with sumi ink. “By going into the paper, behind
and underneath the surface, the drawing gains a unique kind of
physicality—seeking out what lies beyond the surface appearances…” states Pape
when speaking about the effects of her ink saturation technique. Through a
series of sweeping brush strokes that show both meditative restraint and
flights of freedom, Pape creates abstract patterns that evoke an intensely
personal sense of the knowing and understanding of the universal, spiritual
landscape.
When an
artist seeks to uncover truths, designedly spiritual or not, there’s always the
danger of exposing dogmatic doctrine and contrived schemes of religiosity
instead. There is no need to worry about that here. Pape reveals a purity of
vision through an honest exploration of personal truths. There’s no preaching
of prepackaged utopian paths, just pure art speaking from soul to soul.
The two
largest pieces in the show Thesis and Antithesis, which face each other from a distance across the gallery
as if from across time, share a rhythm and balance that draw the viewer into
their centers. They bring to mind the sublime movement of martial arts masters
of the highest order. In “Insight”, a construction of several smaller adjoined
panels, the patterns created by the brushwork suggests Paleozoic ammonites,
evoking all the mysteries of nature inherent in those ancient forms. In another
drawing, Guru”, one can hear the visionary voices of some half destroyed stone
Buddha from the jungle of Angor Wat whispering secrets through Pape’s great
lines the way the sun sends light filtering through the leaves of a great tree or
the slats of venetian blinds.
In what is
considered by many a time of spiritual bankruptcy, the visionary Pape fills the
coffers and throws open the doors to the vaults on pure art that speaks honest
truths. And she does it brilliantly.
The
exhibit “Behind the Seen: Saturated Ink Drawings” ran from December 12 through
January 13th 2004 at the June Kelly Gallery:
href="http://www.junekellygallery.com/">www.junekellygallery.com.
Visit www.skypape.com
name="_Hlt62884890"> for more information about the artist and
her work.
