An exceptional combo graces the gallery walls of Blackfish Gallery this month. Clint Brown and Barbara Black brought color and conceptualism to Gallery Walk attendees and regulars throughout the month. Clint Brown’s abstract paintings take center stage. Had the show been installed a year ago in the gallery’s old space, it would feel cramped. Brown’s work is large both in physical dimension and in its content. It demands as much space as it commands attention.
Brown does not hesitate to reference his inspiration. He sees the richness of colors through works by Bonnard. Those diagonal lines intersecting with rectangular shapes are a recurring composition in Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series. The projected images of cowboys (from Marlboro cigarettes) or ice cream cone are adapted from Pop Art. “I am interested in how to activate the space with whatever it takes,” Clint told us. In doing so, he has captivated his audience.
Sitting on a long bench looking at 7 X 5 foot “Bonneville”, discovery comes slowly. It has fewer elements to decipher — the thin washes on unprimed canvas give a gentler and richer visual experience. The nuanced colors within a narrow range hint at spatial depth. The imperfection in mark-making (partially due to the nature of crayons) resembles our own fallacy of remembering.
More than his source, Brown’s adaptation of different techniques and media shows his facility to energize his pictures to convey a sense of sound, motion, or even smell. For iconic imageries within paintings, some are silk-screen printed; others are through arabic bichromate and large negative film, or even air brush. In close-up, the same motif assumes different feels and characters, due to the variety of techniques. Collective, the repetition serves both as texture to lighten up the surface, and as motifs buried within abstraction, waiting for viewers to connect the dots.
One of the co-founders of Blackfish Gallery, Barbara Black, has work on view in the smaller gallery. Despite their modest size, her mixed media works on paper are both cosmic and mysterious. At first glance you may want to ask “What is it?”, but the more appropriate question, after allowing more time to study, would be “What is it becoming?”
The explosive dynamic benefits from a strong demarcation between light and dark. Yet it is also full of joy. Black’s application of watercolor is a wonder to behold: Its vibrancy and translucency balance the strong contrast. Black said some of her works were developed over a long period of time. She would come back to visit the piece and continue to experiment. The paintings show traces of her effort: a sense of near-abandonment freedom, assisted with care to retain those dearest expressions. Here the colors are the form — they swim in and out to coalesce into exquisite sparkles, like jewels.
Like Brown, Black imbues her abstract work with meaning and motif. In Tower of Babel, the artist refers to the challenge in today’s international and political climate where people are only interested in talking instead of communicating. In such an environment it can seem impossible to understand each other. She embeds a piece of paper with an Arabic script. The calligraphy acts in its own abstract rhythms (and it helps most who cannot read Arabic). It serves as a reminder that without the intention to understand, our own words can be just as difficult to decipher as the text.
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