New works by Kathy Gore Fuss at Dino's
reviewed by Alec Clayton
The Weekly Volcano, Oct. 11, 2012
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| Watershed Alders |
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| Hurdles |
There’s a new
art venue in Olympia, and they’ve been showing some top-notch art. It’s Dino’s
Coffee Bar, attached to Olympia Framemakers on the corner of Harrison and
Division. Their latest show is a selection of landscape paintings by Kathy Gore
Fuss.
People who are
familiar with her work might be surprised that she’s doing landscapes — fairly
traditional landscapes at that, because for more than a quarter century she’s
been known as a highly inventive artist who does mostly humorous and always
unusual art, often combining sculpture and painting into works that defy easy
categorization. With this new body of work she has convinced me that the art of
landscape painting is not dead after all.
Gore Fuss
recently hosted a plein aire workshop. For those who don’t know, plein aire
simply means painting in nature. It was very popular with the French
Impressionists in the mid 19th century. Gore Fuss took her
workshoppers to Priest Point Park, and was apparently so pleased with the
results that she went back after the event and did a whole series of paintings.
There are 16
paintings in this show. All but four are oil on panel, about 10-by-12 inches.
The other four are listed on wall labels as oil on panel, but they’re actually
oil on paper mounted on panels. What they all have in common is that each
painting is a scene seen from such a close viewpoint that it becomes an almost
abstract mesh of tree trunks and leaves with little or no ground or sky
showing, and therefore becomes, in effect, an exercise in expressionistic mark
making as she builds up surfaces of densely interwoven slashes of impasto brushstrokes,
wet-on-wet washes and overlapping marks made from gouging and scratching. The
paintings are energetic and exciting as plein aire paintings should — each picture
appearing to have been done in a single, short painting session.
One of my
favorites is “Snarl,” which looks like it was painted horizontally and then
turned on its side so that tree trunks cross the surface from side to side
instead of up and down. The straight tree trunks are overlapped by a sweep of
U-shaped branches in a tangle or snarl of green. No ground or sky is shown.
It’s all about the mark-making, meaning it’s about the art, not the trees.
One of my least
favorites is “Early Morning,” which is like the others but as if photographed
with soft focus. The watery, unfocused look may emulate the hazy look of
Northwest mornings, and that may have been her intention, but this painting
lacks the variety and definition of marks that make the other paintings
exciting.
The works on
paper are all in tones of sienna and look like old photographs. The dark-light
contrasts in these are very nice.
“Golden Field”
is the most nearly abstract of the lot, with tones of tan and beige and heavy
impasto paint application that looks a lot like a Joan Mitchell painting. This
one is another of my favorites.
“Hurdles” and
“Priest Point Park Trail” are closer to traditional landscape than any of the
others. To think of them in photographic terms, she has pulled back slightly to
allow for a view of the overall scene and not just the tangle of limbs.
“Hurdle” is the only one of the paintings with a feeling for linear and
atmospheric perspective, with a fallen tree in the foreground and vertical
trees receding in size and focus into the depths of the forest.
These paintings
are small, unspectacular and quiet beautiful. I’m very glad she did them, but I
hope they’re just a phase and soon she’ll start doing more of the edgy art
she’s known for.
[Dino’s Coffee Bar, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Sunday, through Oct.
31, Reception Oct. 14, 2:30 – 4:30 pm, 1822 Harrison Ave. NW, Olympia, www.dinocoffeebar.com, 360.357.3232]
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