Art & Critique

Tracy Helgeson: Byzantine Blue Road

A colorful piece, this painting can be viewed from afar and perceived as a magical asymmetrical flower, each color area representing a petal. That way it can appear as close as it gets to abstract art without actually containing any obvious abstract elements. But asymmetry plays a principal role without the involvement of a different stylistic interpretation: the composition, though heavily careening, can be naturally divided into two halves, the left and the right, both of which would include similar but uneven geometrical forms. However, they become commensurable in terms of palette. The right half would include all of the purple trees, with a thin stripe of yellow, blue and the gray-blue of the sky, while the left half would display a more even distribution of all the other colors except the purple. The hot orange grove compensates for its smaller size by its bright hue, and finds an analogous cooler counterpart in the purple forest. The blue of the driveway mediates between the two, as both contain traces of that color. The multiplicity and versatility of colors on the left find a stabilizing counterpart in the form of the single purple block on the right. Thus, geometrical asymmetry can be softened by palette correlation.

Essentially, the orange part is the focal point of this painting, and its arch leads the viewer’s gaze from left to right, and down, to the road in the foreground, in a circular motion. Wandering from one patch to another makes sense when looking at this piece: it is, after all divided into segments. What I find particularly notable is the clever and canonical use of brightest colors for the farthest elements and the coolest for the closest. We register the road subconsciously and automatically, without any effort, diverting our eyes to the more bright elements ahead, which appear closer than they really are. This progression fundamentally repeats the process of driving. The road, though covering almost all of the lower half, is visually undemanding. We become oblivious to objects that flow constantly before our eyes and prefer to move on to more entertaining things. I think it is not accidental that the next hill is painted with a bright color: this might be the artist’s way to mark this remote part as deceptively attractive, as it will shed all of its charm at close distance. In a way, this piece may also serve as an allegory for life and the illusion of individual achievement and success.

In fact, the painting invites several similar philosophical allegories. The perspective forms a vista that transforms, with the trees, into a tunnel — at the end of which we can see a light. The road is significantly tilted in the foreground, referring to the bumps we experience during our everyday walk (drive) of life but, at the visible end it levels out, as if to emphasize the improvement we should hope for in the future. Yet still, the abstract viewing mentioned in the first paragraph may be further reinvented as the wheel of fortune. But these interpretations do not impose on the viewer’s psyche, and the painting can work on different levels, depending on the viewer’s disposition and mood. To my mind, its power resides in its interpretative versatility; meanings look for and find outlets through suggestion. Ultimately, the artist exhibits the understanding that color harbors a universal appeal, and exploits it rightfully.

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Read Related Reviews:

• Tracy Helgeson: Fields
• Tracy Helgeson: A May Day
• Tracy Helgeson: Dark Blue Barn
• Tracy Helgeson

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Daily/Frequent Painters, Tracy Helgeson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.