Two With a Deft Command of Subjects
The Atlanta Journal Constitution Nov. 19, 1999; Weekend Preview / Visual Arts
"Two With a Deft command of Subjects", by Jerry Cullum
In neighboring galleries in TULA Art Center, two bodies of work by younger but well-practiced artists present us with opposing but equally interesting ways of making paintings.
Though Savannah-trained painter Lisa Shinault has exhibited in Atlanta for several years,her work has been infrequently viewed and generally perceived as enigmatic.
This show, at Gallery Zebu, should begin to change both situations,even if life-size oils on canvas of armless "Difficult Women" may be unsettling to some people. Though a few works seem problematic compositionally, most reflect a fully formed, if idiosyncratic, aesthetic.
If the women are portrayed in pieces, it suggests pop-up dolls or the Venus de Milo, not violence. A hula dancer, for example, is portrayed as held together by a spring above the waist.
This species of cheerful surrealism is simultaneously seductive and off-putting. Shinault once said that most of her figures' lack of arms might symbolize being forcibly limited by a world that considers these women "difficult".
Some of her difficult women are splendid examples of stubborn individuality. Their mismatched clothing, for one thing, is almost provocatively odd. Others, such as the hula dancer and a furclad Eskimo, seem like male-fantasy stereotypes of exotic women.
Shinault, however, actively rearranges the stereotypes, indeed, all these figures are willfully altered by a woman who herself appears determined to, as on painting's title has it, "remain difficult." But productively so.
For some years now, Atlanta artist Jennifer Cawley has been finding or inventing symbolds for her Southern and Irish heritages, frequently concealing them beneth layers of light-colored encaustic in muted, understated paintings.
The new work at Lowe Gallery uses new symbols to tell a story of family migration and personal return. Cawley uses graphic outlines of houses, oars and vessels (meaning bottles, bowls and boats) to sugget the process of finding identity in a new place, or reconnecting with it in an old one. The liquid qualities of her melted-wax tecnique are exploited to the full to produce subte gradiations of surface that reinforce the emotional tone of the symbols. The palette is still muted, but subtle in its range when one looks closely.
Cawley has always had an imressive command of her medium; here, she begins to employ a visual vocabulary worthy of her technical skills. Though these works still consist of abstracted images floating in an indefinite color field, they evoke a narrative that is personal and universal.
The verdict: Shinault's work is uneven, strange and fundamentally compelling; Cawley's is a significant advance by a talented younger painter.
