by Christina I. Pappas
As the local art world takes its first steps into the busy fall season, two one-person shows on display in Worcester keep a summer-time temperament. Donna Estabrooks works in acrylics and oil pastel. Her exhibit Seeing Magic is offered through the auspices of ArtsWorcester, and is on display at the ArtsWorcester Gallery at Quinsigamond Community College through Oct. 27. Watercolorist Iris Lanyon, a native of Puerto Rico and now a resident of Holden, is represented at WPI’s Gordon Library in the exhibit Escape to Puerto Rico.
We’ll start with Estabrooks’ Seeing Magic. While for some artists and philosophers, the phrase “the human condition” denotes a glass at least half empty,for Estabrooks, the cup runneth over. A practicing Buddhist with a bachelor of fine arts in painting from UMass-Amherst, Estabrooks was an artist-in-residence at UMass-Amherst for nine years.
But she doesn’t seem to have run out of things she wants to express. While her pictures are drenched in allegory, they crackle with spontaneity. Dreamy Chagall-like images of fairy princesses, birds and tulips are interspersed with more worldly fragments of city maps and written aphorisms. The maps and other elements provide a sense of continuity through many of the paintings, which are executed in a deliberately childlike manner, particularly the oil pastels.
The sense of craft is apparent in the composition of the pieces and the elements used in the collages. “Independent Heart,” for example, stunning in its simplicity, evokes Tudor England’s Elizabeth I for this viewer, while the show’s eponymous work “Seeing Magic” has a princess-and-raven theme. Visual references to fairy princesses play a key part in this work, though they’re not the only theme.
“A Big Heart Grows Sunshine,” for example, is dominated by an enormous blue heart. “I am Singing” contains a deftly executed figure in what looks like a choir robe. “White Crow Medicine Woman” is an amusingly anthropomorphic but at the same time transfixing drawing of a white bird with breasts. “Floating in Dream Clouds” has a surface interest that gives its expanses visual interest.
The 40 works in this exhibit run the range of stories and emotions. While the particulars of each of the stories may not be readily apparent in the work, the paintings themselves are easy to enjoy – particularly for children and those new to art.
Iris Lanyon, nee Iris Alicia Velez, evokes Puerto Rico in her watercolors. “Escape to Puerto Rico” is on display through Oct. 4. She has been painting in 8S! watercolor since 1986, studying first with Jane Neale, then with Susan Swinand and Bill Griffiths.
“Escape to Puerto Rico” is a curiously bifurcated exhibit. It has landscapes painted with an eye to sunlight and shadow that hint of details without overdoing them. It also features a series of carnival paintings, devoted to celebratory costume, that have a coloring-book flatness and lots of detail, which sometimes gets lost in the action. Stylistically, it’s as if two different people are exhibiting here, but Lanyon’s delight in sharing the visual and cultural life of the island is authentic.
Her mastery of the water-color medium shows most clearly in “Catch of the Day #2,” a still life of fish held in the muscular grip of a coastal fisherman. The pinkish-orange of the fish and the precision of the way they’re drawn put the viewer right on the beach. There’s an other very simple picture that most strongly evokes the island. “Piragua – Cherry Flavor Please” focuses on a vendor’s hands pouring what, on the mainland, would be called a cherry slush. You can almost taste it. Lanyon has a talent for the small detail, well rendered.
“Sentinel del Viejo, San Juan” and “Silent Sentinels” show the beauty of the island through light and shadow, and delicate color. However, other pictures such as “Spanish Dancer” have a poster like feel to them, as does the “Vegigante” series, though the costume paintings explode with action and color and are rich in ceremonial detail.
While Estabrooks explores the spirit, Lanyon explores the world. Both artists bring out the joy of what they experience and see. If you aren’t quite ready for fall, these two shows are an excellent Indian summer for the mind.
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