On Friday, April 10 the Des Lee Gallery on Washington Avenue opened the one-weekend show for the Senior Painting Majors of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. The show featured the major’s seven current seniors whose work demonstrates a high level of young painting talent. The artwork of these seniors demonstrates an overall trend in the Sam Fox Painting Department of a representational mode of painting—with a particular affinity for the figure—expressed in distinctive individual styles.
The carefully crafted oil paintings of Julia Clift demonstrate her ability to construct convincing atmospheres with finely tuned color applied in a controlled blocks. Clift’s larger paintings—a few feet on each side—depict one or two figures in a largely gray interior with hints of the colorful outside world. The bright but cool exterior light permeates the interiors creating a specific quiet atmosphere within the scene. Smaller paintings by Clift place the figures outside in brighter landscapes that offer a wider array of hues, however the gray interiors of the larger works allow small areas of color to stand out. The application of paint seems effortless, but the overall presence of the paintings leaves the viewer with a highly considered scene.
Defne Dinler similarly uses the figure in all of her work; however, rather than placing the entire body within a scene, she isolates certain areas as the focus of each piece. An ambiguously-gendered torso becomes a thickly painted sculptural form, a body-less head dissolves into a dark sea, and an idealized nipple becomes an ephemeral screen-like object. Dinler uses particular aspects of the body to experiment with different applications of paint and often pushes the limits of painting as it applies to other art forms.
The large-scale collage-paintings of Jonathan Clark display a mixed-media compilation of patterns, design, and expressive and representational painting techniques.
The somewhat ambiguous narratives in Clark’s work often stem from Japanese and Hawaiian culture and mythology, and he uses both found and created patterned fabrics from these places to highlight the cultural inspiration. His large, colorful compositions weave together patterns and paint, only sometimes involving the figure. The paintings contain elements of highly representational painting combined with flat areas of color and 2-dimensional patterns in a cohesive whole that the viewer reads as a celebratory and symbolic image.
Rachel Cunningham uses oil on canvas to create fantastical worlds where humans, animals, and monsters unite. Each piece focuses on a specific interaction between multiple figures composed in very specific, and often limited, color palettes. For example, one painting concentrates on an intimate embrace between an androgynous human and a monkey-like mammal in a strikingly yellow canvas. Through convincing representation of imagined scenery and creatures, her work effectively draws the viewer into these other worlds.
The work of Abbey Teller similarly creates an estranged world, however hers is based on reality. The sparse pastel drawings display grotesque heads based on the oddness of family portraits. The pastel hues and expanses of white space unconventionally contrast with the faces where crooked teeth, large glasses, and other quirky features are emphasized. Her oil paintings—devoid of any figure—evoke the same awkward sensation due to a haphazard paint application representing common but somewhat kitschy objects.
The depths of outer space currently inspires the materially-experimental paintings of Nicole Petrescu. She uses unusual materials on large panels to create an astronomical atmosphere. These pieces generally display one or two colors with a single space-object against a stellar background allowing the viewer begins to understand the importance of the subject for the artist.
Lainie Turkish contemplates the abstracted designs that occur on the high sheen facades of office buildings within an urban district. Working from her photographs, Turkish carefully crops the images to create paintings that consist of patches of color that oscillate between a recognizable scene and an abstract object. The undulating shapes created by the reflective surfaces contrast with the rigid structures of the buildings to relay a pleasingly complex but understandable image.
The opening on Friday combined the work of these seven artists in a modest space that showcased the strongest works they have created over their two-year period in the Sam Fox Painting Department. Similar shows for each of the Washington University art majors occur throughout April at the Des Lee Gallery to present the culminating artworks of the senior artists. Unfortunately, the works remain in the gallery only for a short weekend, so the talent of these artists will resurface only as they put their work into the art world after they graduate.