You know probably at least one movie where a shrink tells a patient: “Think about your most beautiful memory, imagine the place where you felt most safe as a child.” Well, think about your most beautiful memory and imagine the place where you felt most safe as a child. But if you are having trouble doing that on the spot, these black and white portraits may just strike the spark of semi-spontaneous reminiscence and lead you to the haven of spotless past. These portraits are like portals, and the sting and the rush you might feel going through one is the painful recognition of the gap between its two ends. Maybe I should have taken psychology in university.
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Linda Lucas Hardy is an American artist specializing in colored pencil painting. I browsed her website and several other links offered on this page and learned about the medium and some of its unique techniques; I became enthralled with its congenial creative problems and the surprising, sometimes astonishing solutions that it thereupon suggests. But in today’s review I would like to focus on Linda Lucas Hardy’s individual accomplishments, particularly in the genre of still life. Though the following interpretation may diverge from the artist’s intended meaning, it still fits with her artistic credo of being an “entertainer at heart,” while capturing the “conflicting forces between light and dark.”
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These paintings are all about harmony — so much so that the method with which it is achieved becomes almost irrelevant. I’m thinking that looking at these pieces could hypothetically amount to taking a few valerian drops (if that is your poison), or perhaps sipping a cup of tea while sitting on the depicted chair or bed — somewhere on the omitted corner, and contemplating. But lets look into that “almost” a little bit closer. The series contain a common feature that undermines the leitmotif: the furniture, and in fact almost every object on the painted surface has been cut or somehow dissected — an innately violent operation, which should disrupt the whole idea of serenity. And, I think that it does, so there must be something else that negates that effect, working as a kind of a sedative (valerian, if you will).
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The idea of time and moment’s fluidity takes on a somewhat playful twist in the chocolate series, where direct and planned human activity (in making the chocolates as well as in every step of consuming them) substitutes the unpredictability of nature’s process. Still, a surprising parallel may be drawn between the man made bonbons and the flowers: seeing the chocolates in their wrappers may remind of the ripening period; removing the foil and presenting the sweets in their glory associates with reaping the harvest, while it’s in the height of its bloom; finally, gorging on the artificial fruits resembles smelling the flowers, and, in an ironically reverse twist — looking at them.
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Jeanne Illenye is an experienced, “predominantly self-taught artist” from Michigan, USA. She creates both small and large canvases presented at her website and blog, and covers a variety of themes within the still life genre. Arguably, the most fascinating subject she explores is the series on books and watches: they are particularly appealing to me as they relate to the painter’s lateral artistic pursuits, of which there are quite a few, as you may learn from some of her blog posts. But there is one salient feature that distinguishes her artwork as a whole, and in effect makes up one of the essentials of her style: it is the uncommon, even quaint, touch of serenity and poise that permeates every piece and eventually overflows to gently sweep the viewer along.
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