Art Walker
If you read this column frequently, you may have read some of my “confessions,” like having a penchant for fun art and good titles — things no art critic worth her salt should probably admit. But I got into a conversation with an artist last week about titles and recommended she go over to see Sharon Booma’s show at LewAllen Contemporary if she wanted to get my drift.
Abstract art is difficult for many people — including me, sometimes — to get into. A title that at least hints at what the artist was thinking about before, during or after making a work can help the viewer take the plunge. Actually, that’s true for representational work as well. Just because I can tell it’s a farmhouse doesn’t mean I can read the artist’s intent. “Scene of the Crime” suggests something entirely different from “Grandma’s Place.”
I was already quite engaged in looking at Booma’s oil and mixed media works on panel — before I paid any attention to her titles. But once I did, I was struck immediately by how appropriate they seemed; I could somehow sense that the essence of the title was expressed in the painting. (At this point, I’m sincerely hoping Booma doesn’t get her drunken next-door neighbor, 22-year-old niece or the homeless guy on the corner to title them.)
“Words Dropped From Dialogue,” for example, seems particularly to refer to a past event or events, and not just due to its title. Pale yellow ochre dominates the canvas; a bar of black streaks the bottom and a swathe of dark mustard crosses the top. Some bright orange layered beneath, revealed in several places, somehow hints at a figure. Small spots of turquoise and royal blue punctuate the visual conversation.
Booma has said she was influenced by Henri Matisse and Robert Motherwell, but that’s not readily apparent in this work. Instead, her tendency to use rectangles, squares and bands of dominant color bring Mark Rothko to mind; her forms and color choices, Hans Hoffman. Booma’s strokes, made primarily with tools rather than brushes, are strong and mostly wide. In some areas she uses heavy impasto, and carves or scratches into the wood panel surfaces. Smaller spots of color aren’t added to the surface, but revealed in the underlying layers where she has chosen not to paint over them. Philosophically, this is an assertion that matches her stroke, additive rather than reductive, positive rather than negative. Booma’s palette is similarly purposive; these paintings are mostly in variations of orange, blue and black.
On a handful of paintings Booma has overlaid rectangular aluminum or steel panels. “Could Not Keep, Control or Hold” includes two pieces of metal attached together with rusty locking devices and occupying a section in the middle of the canvas. Besides the fact that it’s a blatantly literal referent, the hard, cold metal seems at odds with the warmth of the painting it bisects and cheats us of what’s underneath.
Likewise, the regular mark-making and scratching on some of the paintings, including “Unspoken Agreement” and “Balancing the Scales,” struck me as decorative in a way that demeaned the artist’s otherwise psychologically hefty paintings.
Most of Booma’s works in this exhibit are literally hefty as well, up to 6 feet square, but she did include two suites of smaller pieces. Her 6-by-6-by-3-inch boxes, displayed in two grids, are really too small to support her style. But the 12-by-12 by 3-inch works, like “Living Moon by Moon,” which includes paper collage, hold up well. Most interesting of these departures from the large paintings are her works on paper, particularly the long, horizontal pieces in oil and paper collage, such as “Test of Devotion.” These works feel almost narrative, having sequential blocky areas of color, but they also combine a spontaneity and complexity that’s surprising. They’re different enough from the paintings to be characterized as first cousins but not siblings. Still, the paintings are the real gems here. The diptych “Taking a Stand” places a yellow-orange square in the center of the panel, surrounded by browns and blacks. In places, colors layered beneath peek through in a way that feels unselfconscious and accidental, but somehow correct. There’s nothing tentative or uncertain about this work. It’s intuitive and gutsy; Booma is standing on firm ground. (And you’re going to love her titles, too.)
Contact Hollis Walker at hwalker259@earthlink.net
If You Go
WHAT: “Defining Circumstances,” paintings by Sharon Booma
WHEN: Through March 30
WHERE: LewAllen Contemporary, 129 W. Palace Ave.
CONTACT: 988-8997, www.lewallencontemporary.com
