Andrea Morganstern, Kali's Playground, 2003, Oil on Canvas,
40" x 48"
March 2004
Andrea Morganstern
Kimberly Venardos Gallery
Utilizing both representational and abstract images to convey an apparent spiritual belief in a unity that underlies all forms in nature, Andrea Morganstern’s new series of oil paintings, dubbed Nature's Pulse, reflects this artist's understanding of a world that is intended to be in a constant state of flux or transformation. She expresses this idea through forms that are conversely amorphous; in a perpetual state of creative transformation.
The four subjects of the work included here range from bamboo stalks set in varying spatial relationships to each other, oak trees (from New York’s Central Park), birds in flight and abstract works that display cracks, breaks and fissures in varying textured media. These recurring networks of shapes emulate the growth process that underlies change, transition and regeneration found in nature and developed in art. They are unified by a feathery moss-like pictorial ground.
Morganstern carefully hones her means of expression to a few carefully modulated colors and precisely painted forms. Employing a mottled pictorial ground in all of her works, she relies on purely visual, non-verbal means to communicate her perception of unity in nature. By avoiding specific details, and by isolating the forms from identifiable surroundings, she allows her subjects to remain open to interpretation. For example, eliminating the surface pattern in her closely cropped oak trees accentuates the appearance of animal heads with eyes that seems to peer curiously at the viewer (at least this viewer). She employs glowing creamy tones that produce harmonious color relationships with her green and turquoise pictorial grounds.
In another group of paintings Morganstern focuses on a few bamboo stalks, varying the spatial relationships between the stalks and alternating their colors; sometimes using pale yellow-green, and in another painting, deep Prussian blue. The stalks are related visually only to each other and to the meticulous, tempered hues that comprise the pictorial space. With no other visual references offered, these images seem mysteriously isolated. As she adjusts her color choices for the stalks, however, the emotional expression varies accordingly; the forms may stand out clearly, or recede to a deeper pictorial space. Morganstern employs the same type of sophisticated differentiated ground in abstract paintings that display patterned cracks and fissures. These elements establish patterns, which readily move the eye through the pictorial space. When the lines transform into larger shapes, they begin to resemble insects or tiny soldiers rather than cracks or breaks. They are metaphors for the changes caused by time and weather to human beings, plants, animals and the larger physical world.
Rift,
split, or disjunction are some words that add clarity
to the meaning of the term "fissure." Instead of making use of an
emotionally expressionistic approach to the concept of change, Morganstern
takes a lyrical look at the stirring of new directions. Paradoxically, she
entirely avoids accidents; no distress or anxiety is to be found in these
paintings, only attunement to the natural processes. While her works display an
affinity with time-worn surfaces in, for example, the classical ruins of
The painting, Four Green Bamboo (2000), presents four pale yellow-green stalks set at varying distances across the pictorial space. The muted image elicits a soothing, emotional response. The two New York Oak (2001) works both depict luminous, whitish yellow trees that evoke associations with joyous, curious animals. Using a more intricate abstract language in Canticle of Creatures (2004), Morganstern employs sensitive warm, golden and turquoise hue relationships, and tiny cracks, that imply the small linear soldiers found on ancient Grecian urns. Similarly, in From the Marsh (2004) a purple-green background, with large orange fissures, moves the eye readily through the pictural space. Her paintings of soaring, almost identical birds suggest a distant glimpse that feels as if they are being seen from an aerial perspective.
The themes in evidence here involve an idea of freedom and the nature of change; gradual change that takes place slowly, even imperceptibly, over a long period of time. This is not about emotional upheaval, or the strain that one might be inclined to associate with a changing world; rather, this work lives in the quiet alterations that occur within the corridor of time passing, somewhere between the biological and the spiritual.
MARY HRBACEK