LIFE IN THE STUDIO ON BALANCE By Lorraine Shemesh *** The Montréal Review, January 2025 Book jacket cover, 2024, Clasp, detail |
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On balance, the visual world has anchored and propelled me. Making art requires time, perseverance, invention, and strength, but the beauty it provides can be restorative. Along with the formal elements wrestled with during the working process, there are powerful emotional components engaged, and endless possibilities generated. Art making is an endeavor in which one frequently lands in unknown territory. Lorraine Shemesh, Crescent, 2013, oil on canvas, 75 x 48 3⁄4 inches You explore new ideas where the answers are not clear, where things reveal themselves in ways that surprise and grip you. Every time you try something new, you learn what works and what does not, and the insight gained, alternately, brings you to your knees and lifts you higher than you ever thought was possible. Drawing is the bridge in all the work that I have done. It is the manner in which my ideas first begin to germinate, regardless of the medium that I eventually choose to build the piece with. Sometimes the initial exploratory drawings are swift linear studies, and some are more developed, using full tonal range, which present a wide range of choices later on. Lorraine Shemesh, Black & White Checked Nerikomi Bottle, 2021, porcelain, 10 3⁄4 x 7 1⁄4 x 2 3⁄4 inches Visual magic for me, however, lies in the combination of figuration and abstraction. I like the spontaneous quality of a certain kind of mark making and the challenge of marrying that to the figure. Paint has a strong physical presence, whether it is rough, smooth, pushed, or splattered. Developing the form with various paint viscosities makes one see differently, as thickly painted areas sit next to more transparent passages on the canvas. During the process, the figure is altered, so I think of it as a kind of synthesis. Pattern has also played an integral role in the development of my work over time, whether it is planned or improvised, it is memorable because it has the capacity to transform things. Developing various repeated patterns in order to create movement, rhythm, and harmony, presents the possibility of a visual metamorphosis in the work at hand. Initially, I was attracted to surface patterns on fabric, patterns that occur in nature, striated light patterns, and both geometric and organic shapes. Early on, I was drawn to water as a subject because of its myriad of patterns in constant flux. I have also employed pattern as a form of camouflage to hide and reveal different aspects of the human form as it moves. Lorraine Shemesh, Jigsaw, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 51 inches When working figuratively one is dealing with a charged form physically, psychologically, and, most importantly, visually. There are certain conceptual issues that I am confronting, like disjuncture and harmony, the politics of communication, and how to use the figure in today's world and make it relevant, something vital that expresses myriad nuanced feelings. The question I ask myself is, "How do you bring the figure to life and give it a pulse so that it can express something about the human condition in poetic form?" Most of the models I have worked with to develop the paintings in water and on dry land have been professional dancers. The line of their flexible bodies allowed me to configure images with extreme gestures and the sense of fluidity I was looking for. Many of these paintings take into account the fact that dancers are encouraged to fall in rehearsal so that they may know the tipping point of any given movement. The emotional component in all of this enters the work in both conscious and subliminal ways. Out of necessity, at a certain point, I stepped away from the use of the intense, bright color, that I had worked with for many years while creating the Painted Pools. The Intersection series that followed, juxtaposes heroic scale with a deep sense of personal loss that I experienced at that time. In bringing the models onto dry land and covering them in graphic black and white costumes of my own design, I was able to confront my grief, trying to hold on while having to learn to let go, and in so doing found a new way of working that set me back on my feet. Lorraine Shemesh, Cream & Rust Checked Vessel, 2017, stoneware, 7 3⁄4 x 10 x 10 1⁄2 inches There is a strong connection between the paintings I have made and the ceramic vessels that have informed their creation. So many of the words that describe the components of a ceramic piece mirror language used for body parts: the lip, the neck, the shoulder, the belly and the foot all come together to form the whole. There is a similar sensibility in the formal structure of some of the figure paintings that aligns with earlier ceramic pieces I had made. When I began to work with clay, I was drawn to the fact that the process employs all the elements: earth, air, fire, and water. This experience shifted the way I was thinking. I used light and dark clay bodies to create woven and intertwined patterns, which exist simultaneously on the interior and exterior of the forms. Lorraine Shemesh, Attached, 2018, oil on canvas, 64 x 61 1⁄2 inches The patterns in these ceramic vessels informed the abstract designs in the paintings that followed. The ceramic pieces were, in part, inspired by layered rock formations and the understanding that when there is change in the earth the ground heaves violently and only when gravity takes hold, does it become solid again. The various colored stripes that remain are the earth's memory of the shifts and witness the environmental changes that have occurred over time. The choice to use the warmer color palette of the earth from which the clay was made, in the new paintings, was informed largely by trips to New Mexico to observe the landscape there. There is also a nod to the weaving together of the light and dark of the human experience. Clay has a memory, is easily broken, sensitive to touch and temperature, capable of fragility and strength, and greatly affected by the atmosphere in which it finds itself. Much the same thing can be said for the human body and the ephemeral nature of life itself. Lorraine Shemesh, Chrysalis, 2023, oil on canvas, 60 x 42 inches During a lifetime spent in the studio, there are extraordinary moments of clarity when you look at things that startle you, when the unexpected is accomplished, and the passion to make things is given form, as you see the world from a different point of view, imagine what it could be, and feel renewed.
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