Rebecca Crowell: translations: painting and poetry

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Wednesday, March 04, 2020

translations: painting and poetry

My current exhibit (with Jerry McLaughlin), Translations: Painting and Poetry, at Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery in Lafayette, California is up for another week and a half, until March 14. If you're in the area and haven't had a chance to see it, I hope you will stop in.

My paintings in this exhibit are based on work by the Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney. I was first drawn to Heaney because his sources are so deeply rooted in the culture, landscape, and history of Ireland, a country I have grown to love over many visits. When I was asked to choose a poet’s work as my reference for this exhibit, I thought of him immediately. My appreciation grew as I began to read his work more deeply, a rewarding aspect of this project. His poetry evokes in me a longing for the earthy beauty of Ireland, while his observations of the complex inner lives of humans are profound and moving. Stylistically, his work is built on complex rhythms, meanings, and resonances that have continued to unfold for me over time.

with Ground of Being, 68"x40"

Responding to poetry as abstract painting is a new way of working for me, and I found that Heaney’s words led me to a more conceptual approach than I have used in the past. They led me to use a combination of geometric minimalism, organic textures, and subtle but specific imagery. In some cases, the images emerged as direct reference to certain words or phrases he uses, and other times they are simply what came to me intuitively as the result of immersing myself in his work. But although there are certain images from his work in the mix, my own memories, associations, and ideas are also strong factors.

Squarings, each 12"x12"

My suite of small paintings, Squarings, is based on Heaney’s long poem of that name. Heaney’s Squarings consists of four sections of twelve short poems each with twelve lines. This geometric structure influenced my interpretation of twelve 12”x12” square paintings. I painted these during a residency at Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland in March of 2019, while reading and re-reading parts of the poem each day. I set out to complete this series during my residency in Ireland so that I was immersed the whole time in the country at the heart of Heaney’s work. The poem examines dualities including the material and spiritual worlds, the present and past, and private and shared experience. It is considered the most fluid and intuitively written of his many works. The other paintings in the exhibit also draw on ideas from Heaney’s poem Squarings, with the exception of St. Kevin and the Blackbird, which refers to a poem of that name that speaks to me about the creative process.

St. Kevin and the Blackbird, 42"x36"

A wonderful aspect of this exhibit was the opportunity to exhibit for the first time with my dear friend and business partner, Jerry McLaughlin. Here is an excerpt of what we wrote for our shared statement that is posted in the gallery:

While the term Translations indicates our shared intention to retain the spirit and ideas of this poetry, our work is not meant to illustrate that work. Rather, our approach is to reflect our experience as readers of the work, as the poet’s words bring our own thoughts, feelings, and memories to the surface. These paintings may best be described as conversations with our selected poets in which each of us adds meaning.
Because abstraction defies linear thought and exact description, it seems a perfect fit for this interpretation. The poems themselves are complex, evocative, and multi-layered, with no one right way to read or respond to them. The process we both use in our work is also in alignment with dense and layered meaning. Oil mixed with cold wax medium is built up gradually in layers allowing for complex surfaces and glimpses of underlying history.
Although the two poets we chose to work with--Frederico Garcia Lorca (for Jerry) and Seamus Heaney (for Rebecca)--are different in many ways, the work that we produced for this exhibit is congruent in terms of structured compositions, organic textures, and earthy, neutral color. Perhaps this points to our shared sensibilities as close friends and collaborators. Without prior discussion we each gravitated to a poet who distills the complexities of experience into grounded yet nuanced words, and this is reflected in our interpretations of that work.

Jerry and I with Jennifer Perlmutter, gallery owner

¶ 8:13 AM

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