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Eleanor AldrichON THE BOAT - Textural Figurative Painting of Figure on Sailboat- oil and enamel2020
2020
About the Item
Excerpt from review by art critic Joe Nolan:
'On the Boat' is the best work in the show, and it’s among the best paintings Aldrich has produced. The portrait depicts a woman sailing. She pulls on a rope, her face covered in the torrent of her wind-whipped chestnut hair. She braces her foot against the railing of the ship, which is pitched at a dramatic angle — viewers might imagine waves and gales and salt and spray, but Aldrich doesn’t actually paint any of them. Her portraits give us little narratives packed with big drama, and it’s those elements that make these works so much more interesting and engaging than pieces that seem mostly preoccupied with texture for its own sake.
In Aldrich’s work, formal elements like color and especially texture are pushed to the forefront, and viewers visualize the peril on display in “On the Boat” only after they’ve stopped to marvel at the frosting-like smears of gooey color that render the scene. Aldrich’s sailor is wearing blue jeans, which the artist paints in a patchwork of blues and whites iterated across a repeating texture of horizontal bands. Aldrich mixes her paint with materials like caulk and silicone to realize the alchemy of plastic-y pigments that don’t drip or splatter with the frenzied stylistics of action painting. This combination of profusions of paint organized in measured textures can be literally mesmerizing, as Aldrich’s undulating surfaces lull viewers with a ceaseless promise of pure sensuality.
The sailor’s sweater is suggested by another succession of thick black, yellow and white stripes — a few punches of red make for dramatic complements. The face is covered in a hirsute mask that suggests the shape of a bird’s head in profile. There’s dreadful horror in the monstrous visage, realized by the beak-like brushstrokes of blackish-brown that obscure the sailor’s eyes, nose and mouth. But Aldrich’s faceless, isolated figures haunt That Feeling When with a wide range of nuanced moods –— lonely contemplation, quiet desperation, silent relaxation — despite their lack of expressions."
Statement:
In the series of paintings titled “That Feeling When,” Aldrich expands the excess of materials to large figure paintings and small, overfilled sculptures. Aldrich uses thick materials that protrude from the surface, reminding the viewer that the paintings are not only physical objects in themselves, but also create the illusion of the picture. The work employs a risky excess of material that borders on uncontrollable; becoming metaphoric for barely controlled femininity, the attraction and repulsion of materialism, and the body pressing against constraints.
The figures in the paintings are seen from behind or have turned away. The viewer is put in a place of questioning whether they are a voyeur or a co-viewer with the figure of something deeper in the picture plane. The full body paintings of young women based on Nancy Drew mystery book covers offer seductive form and richness, but on closer examination are a shell of hair and clothing. She seems to be both a knowing participant in the image; half posing for the viewer, and half involved with what is happening within the image. Like the paint that builds her she is part physical reality and part illusion. The campiness of the image becomes a cover and metaphor for real fear. The figures in the lawn chairs, hammocks, and the sculptural objects offer a protrusion of material that is at times satisfying, repulsive, and funny. The viewer is confronted with the social taboos of a body or substance that exceeds its bounds, meditations on the nature of reality and illusion, and a more acute awareness of the self as a viewer.
- Creator:Eleanor Aldrich (American)
- Creation Year:2020
- Dimensions:Height: 40 in (101.6 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Framing:Framing Options Available
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Signal Mountain, TN
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU98517026262
Eleanor Aldrich
Eleanor Aldrich was born in Springerville, Arizona. A participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, she also holds an MFA in Painting & Drawing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she currently lives. She earned her BFA in Painting & Drawing through the Academie Minerva (Groningen, the Netherlands) and Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff. She was a participant in the Drawing Center’s first Open Sessions, and works in a long-distance collaboration ALDRICH & WEISSBERGER with the artist Barbara Weissberger. Eleanor has had solo shows in Boston, Nashville, Knoxville, Flagstaff, AZ, and at the University of Alabama. Her work has been shown at Saltworks Gallery and White Space (Atlanta, GA), the Drawing Center (New York, NY), Grin (Providence, RI) and Ortega y Gasset (New York, NY). Her work was chosen for 1708 Gallery’s ‘FEED 2013’ (Richmond, VA). She has been awarded an Endowment for the Arts through the Whiteman Foundation, and the Herman E. Spivey Fellowship. Her work has been included in New American Paintings, and reviewed in Art in America and on Artforum. Statement: My work is about the places where the concerns of modernist painting meet my own experiences and the physical reality of the body. Sometimes the encounter is in the application – paint is combed, piped, squished, and sprayed, and paper transfers are rubbed off; playing with ideas of femininity and the purity of paint. The material squeeze invites the empathy of the body and is at times funny, beautiful, revolting, and satisfying. The grid appears as a support- a resist that molds the material as it presses through. In this way the material is metaphoric of conformity and issues of control over one’s body.
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