Paintings by Nancy
Hull Kearing at the Atlantic Gallery: Depleting the formal
“An image begins to reveal itself and I paint it – moving
back and forth from floor to table.” Nancy Hull Kearing
At the Atlantic Gallery Nancy Hull Kearing provokes us by
juxtaposing modernist geometric primitives on energetic turbulent
surfaces. These almost architectural drawings challenge the
imposition of Euclidean shapes on a contemporary urban fabric
seething with chaos and misconstrued depths.
Blended urban explosions are contained and released in rich
colors and subliminal patterns, while primitive geometric shapes
endeavor to control these bursts but flow into the mesmerizing
organism of the composition.
The success of these paintings has a lot to do with the intensity
and technique of the base composition. The base is composed
on the floor giving the artist a greater freedom of movement
and the ability of her instincts to soar without restrictions.
The organic nature of the base is almost primordial + urban.
Bold black cloth strokes on red (Eclipse), thin knife
strokes on wet acrylic (Below Zero, Circumscribed) and
sprays and splashes (Maelstrom, Halfnote) portray
the primitive power and the agony of a misunderstood urban
fabric almost as if to serve as a subliminal warning note.
The foreground is created with Euclidean geometric primitives
and has a very rigid quality almost staccato in some compositions.
They appear like intensely measured movements on a surface
of infinite depth and complexity. These shapes initiate very
formal movements and are confronted by the immeasurable base
surface. Herein lays the fantastic narrative that Kearing has
developed in these paintings.
While the first few paintings at the gallery appear to allow
the foreground geometric primitives to perform their waltz,
the narrative changes as we get to Eclipse. Here the
strength of the base composition pulls some of the formal foreground
elements into them almost appearing to incense these shapes
into complicity. This fracas of the formal with the organic
continues as a second parallel dance and leads to some delightful
dark compositions such as Below Zero, Hot Sauce and Illuminati and
leads to compositions such as the almost Rothko like Dance
Square.
Kearing takes inspiration from Malevich, Kandinsky and Mondrian
to show the melting away of the formal tectonic diagram into
a dialogue with the infinite fabric: a visual treat for architects
and artists.
Partho Dutta
10.28.2006
nkearing@optonline.net
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