You don’t need to travel south to find refuge from the dull chill of February. From our gallery windows in Chelsea, everything has been the same color for a while now. A steely gray has enveloped the buildings, melded the sky with the harbor and dulled the dark pavement with a glaze of ice. Yet inside our walls, we have grown a garden of paintings and sculptures for our exhibit “Flowers in February.” The canvases are lush with warm colors and crawling with new growth.
This show is a testament to the continued relevance of painting. Only paintings could capture the colors and rhythms of the warmer months and set them loose to rejuvenate and perfume the gallery in the dead of winter. The ability to illustrate nature this affectively takes great technical skill and dedication. The realist and representational artists showing in this exhibit include Eliza Auth, Mary Baker, Fred Danziger, Carolyn Edlund, Ailene Fields, William Gannotta, Jacqueline Gnott, Joe Hameister, David Jermann, Glenn Kessler, Janet Laird-Lagassee, Kimberly Meuse, Nancy Bea Miller, Nick Patten and Gilbert Riou.
Historically, flowers have been used as symbols in still lifes. Each type and color of flower has a different connotation. A white lily symbolizes purity while a blood red rose evokes quite the opposite. The artists in “Flowers in February” use these symbols as hieroglyphics, as a language to compose messages and provoke emotions.
Biologically, humans are wired to value flowers. They signify a healthy stretch of ground, good water supply and an abundance of pollinators, fertilizers and predators. Even now that we have evolved past living off the immediate land, flowers strike a chord of health and goodness. We are stirred by their brilliant colors and fragrances. These attributes were adopted to attract butterflies and bees. Yet, it seems that butterflies and humans have similar tastes and perhaps we are not as elevated from nature as it sometimes seems.
We tune into flowers as objects of passion. Whereas birds use colorful plumage for courting, humans give bouquets. The flower is the reproductive structure of the plant and so is the simple and gorgeous physical manifestation of sexuality.
Jacqueline Gnott uses objects of the past in her still lifes to pull you back through time. She paints classic varieties of flowers and objects that used to be her mother’s. Her themes, expressed through flowers, are those of youth and beauty, idealized in memory’s mind. Experiencing her paintings, you may be struck by melancholy at the loss of the wonder years, or by awe at the simplicity and invincible youth of those flowers that have withered in the vase but bloom ever brighter in your memory.
Kimberly Meuse is a master of texture, especially velvety petals and the dewdrops that adorn them. Her medium of choice is watercolor, a difficult selection for such precise work. However, the paint pushes her to find innovative techniques and constantly revise her process. Meuse may spend all day setting up a still life, in the belief that the painting process should be carried out in a relaxed, organic manner. She grows the flowers that she uses in her garden. The tranquility of her approach shines through the work to bask the viewer in an atmosphere of peace.
Nancy Bea Miller’s paintings are also harmonious – incorporating the rhythms of her home and of the natural world. Her artistic pursuits are determined by the growing season; she paints flowers and fruits as they blossom and ripen in her garden. To some, still life may seem like a narrow or restrictive genre, but Miller’s compositions and subjects, rich with rich emotional history, speak of a place much greater than the tabletop – the landscape of the mind. Miller writes that her still lifes are, “small worlds descriptive of my inner world.”
This show is about beauty. You may back away from the term, so contested in recent art historical dialogue. But relax. “Flowers in February” is about the simple beauty of the natural world. Rather than challenge it, take this time to marvel at the small miracles of life that these artist have picked to share with us.
