Jeannie Motherwell: Makai ON ARTSY
MAKAI is an On-Line exhibition of selected paintings by JEANNIE MOTHERWELL, a painter living and working in Cambridge and Provincetown, MA.
Jeannnie Motherwell, Metamorphosis, ca. 2015 Acrylic on clayboard 48 × 60 in 121.9 × 152.4 cm
MAKAI is an exhibition of selected paintings by JEANNIE MOTHERWELL. The works here are rigorous while still embracing the element of surprise we have come to depend on from this accomplished painter. In this show we see further use of the brush as a control effect, testing what it can do to tinker with her process to shape, change, and push the limits of paint and form. Motherwell begins each piece first on the floor by pouring paint with abandon onto her surfaces, spreading it around with an eye for shape and line. In this step, she welcomes the unknown, paying little attention to what mediums she mixes with her acrylics as it is of little importance to a painter so completely engrossed in her work, squeezing paint straight from the tube onto her canvas. Once the work is dry, she hangs it on the wall and starts editing, never getting too attached to any specific part. It will and has to change. She relishes this editing process as a necessary part of her exploration of her subject.
Motherwell looks to the natural world, from the depths of the ocean to the deepest recesses of space. The natural world is an endless resource to her. She is fascinated with these cosmic and earthly mysteries, exploring these subjects again and again with reverential, probing intensity. She paints with memories of the constant flux of the landscape and the ebb and flow of the surf always fresh in her mind.
Here inner and outer space are expansive, raw, and unfiltered, and they all are exalted at the altar of Motherwell. From the vast ocean to photos from the Hubble telescope, she is fascinated with the unknowable space, documented with shining bursts of color and light. Standing before these pieces, we are confronted with a portal to experience the existential, the natural, and the beautiful. It is a rare intention, nowadays, to seek out beauty as the final product. But when Motherwell guides us there, we can feel it in our bones as a primal reaction. Her work embraces intimacy, mystery, and the all-consuming nature of the sublime. For viewers who have been yearning for complete relinquishment of control, here it is. To view her work is to get swept away in the sea, and to enjoy it.
~ by Isabelle Turgeon