Words in Color
An exhibition
of recent work by Sheryl L. White
Regis College, Fine Arts Center
September
7 - October 27, 1999
Painters often have favorite designs: Turner’s vortex, Chardin’s single
looming form surrounded by subsidiary forms, Rubens’ spiral. They explore
compositional ideas again and again, restating reexamining them, discovering
an astonishing number of new possibilities in a basically simple concept. Sheryl
White carefully considers the relational proportions of the square and the rectangle
with economy, close tonalities, and delicate colors.
These oil paintings on paperboard began as exercises for trompe l’oeil
fragments in the artist’s early landscapes. Her command of the viewer’s
attention is strengthened by what photographers call the "selective focus."
White developed this focus to a point where she now concentrates most of her
activity on intimate works of two to three inches. Color and tone provide variety
within a strict geometric scheme. The precision of the chosen design is softened
and enriched by the handling of paint. She often uses neutral colors to create
a subdued setting for one strong color, which appears, by contrast, to be more
intense than it actually is. Inch by inch colors change. The transitions are
never abrupt. The colors are constantly sharpened and subdued as if the light
and atmosphere were shifting as you watch.
Her compositions of squares and rectangles are relieved by diagonal "flaps."
The receding lines and deepening color of Open Hard (1998) create the illusion
of three dimensional space. The flap tantalizes the viewer with suggestions
of another reality hidden beneath the surface. The flap has depth and casts
a shadow. The top of the flap is gradually lightened to suggest some faint light
emanating from above. The strangely convincing sense of space and atmosphere
is enhanced by the texture of the paint itself. The shift in tone is just enough
to indicate foreground and distance and to establish a center of interest. The
paintings that incorporate a single flap open a dialogue with the viewer. They
become almost a prologue to a more complex exploration of this image when the
artist presents paintings with multiple flaps.
In some paintings the single subject of flap, square, and rectangle is multiplied
into a sequence. By grouping these same-but-different images horizontally, White
encourages a reading of them as a sort of sentence. She develops this formal
structure as a metaphor for language. In this process of serialization the images
are given different inflections. In the painting entitled The Years on a Stage
(1998) the artist creates a restrained drama of intervals and shapes. The structural
logic of the intervals is the "grammar." It is as though the paintings
return us to a state of natural wildness which precedes words.
White employs the serialization technique to explore her own life. She divides
her life to date into seven paintings each with seven episodes. In this narrow
range of tone and color and with this strictly rectilinear setting and slight
deviation becomes dramatic. Within the panels of seven images there are spikes
of attentions which record or note a significant event in her life. The format
enables White to explore her social and individual psychological change over
time in visual form.
Actual text in incorporated into the work entitled Prison Sentence (1998). Two
words, "prison" and "sentence," are broken into carefully
considered proportions. The divisions make the viewer concentrate on each segment
as if they were images from a series of stop-action photographs.
White invites the viewer to respond to the boldness of these simple design decisions-to
the division of the picture plane by extremely spares pictorial elements, placed
with great care. The paintings are not epics or novels but are verses and notes.
Rosemary Noon
Director
Fine Arts Center
Regis College