Notes on My Recent Lyrical Expressionist Paintings

Leonardo

Notes on My Recent Lyrical Expressionist PaintingsAuthor(s): Cynthia PolskySource: Leonardo, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter, 1975), pp. 53-54Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1573188 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 8, pp. 53-54. Pergamon Press 1974. Printed in Great Britain

NOTES ON MY RECENT LYRICAL EXPRESSIONIST PAINTINGS

Cynthia Polsky*

A painting, for me, is a tangible rendering of my consciousness. I regard paintings as complex units of consciousness in which instinctive activities of artists are related to certain forms that recur again and again in visual art and to the tendencies of their milieu. As Herbert Read commented: 'One can say that form is archetypal or universal whereas style is individual or regional' [1].

I prefer to begin work on a painting in a spontaneous manner. My large scale paintings are made while placed flat on the floor with large sized soft brushes for spattering and with sponges and papers of various kinds for drying up areas of wet paint. Initially, I work all over a canvas with only the vaguest image or color in mind. By the second day, I usually find an image in the painting that I want to focus upon in a more conscious manner. At this point, I may simply look at the painting for a number of hours in order to decide on its ultimate direction. I then work on the composition until I feel it has attained unity and gives an emotive quality that satisfies me. A. Crispo in the intro- duction to an exhibition catalog of my recent paintings remarked that my images are 'simple and summary and yet they are brought together in such a complexity of organization that they possess eidetic implications' [2].

In 1973, I completed a series of canvases 7 x 6 ft. This gives an area that can be spanned by a person with outstretched limbs, in an actual and meta- phoric sense-a space over which one can stretch and reach. The space in which the action of painting takes place is vital to me and has its roots in my years of training as a ballet dancer. Gestures are basic to dance as they are in this kind of painting, where they leave a permanent record on the canvas. I generally play recorded music in my studio, par- ticularly during the 'spontaneous' period of starting a new work. I am receptive to many kinds of music and feel that their rhythmic structures become a real source of material for my work.

The making of small-scale works on paper with pastels, watercolors and the monoprint technique

* Artist living at 50 East 79th Street, New York, NY 10021, U.S.A. (Received 1 December, 1973.)

provides me with a different artistic experience that is of much importance to me. These informal pieces have the spontaneity of images rapidly recorded, in contrast to large paintings that reveal the layer by layer process of their execution. Indeed, I am much interested in Levi-Strauss' idea that the miniature is a 'universal' type of the art work. He states: 'The question arises whether the miniature may not in fact be the universal type of the work of art ... The paintings of the Sistine Chapel are a small-scale model despite their imposing dimen- sions, since the theme which they depict is the end of time. The same is true of the cosmic symbolism of religious monuments' [3].

I have a profound sense while painting of my personal past-of visual memories that precede conscious thought and an awareness of the arts of the past and of my own time. Paul Klee spoke of art as 'a memory of age-old things, dark things whose fragments live on in the artist'. In painting and in poetry, disparate kinds of imagery can be compressed and given meaning in relation to each other. I find that many of my conscious visual interests emerge in new combinations in my paintings.

In 'Grotto, II' (Fig. 1, cf. color plate), I was aware of shaping images that were related to those that appear in cave paintings of the Stone Age in Europe and in Chinese classical landscapes and to forms of living things in the sea. The disintegration of man-made artifacts with the passage of time fascinates me. In 'Hadrian' (Fig. 2), there are rectangular blocks of color that appear to float over a finely textured surface as though they were of a large building that had come apart in a vast cataclism.

The forms one sees in nature, from the simplest to the most elaborate, are central to my imagina- tion. In 'Sunday Earth' (Fig. 3), I introduced a variety of organic forms in various colors on an aluminum support. Changes in ambient light strongly affect the appearance of the painting, especially because of the reflection of light from visible parts of the surface of the aluminum. I feel that the resulting changes in the appearance of the painting are like seasonal changes in the colors of

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Cynthia Polsky

Fig. 2. 'Hadrian', acrylic paint on canvas, 7 x 6 ft., 1973.

vegetation. In 'Serengeti' (Fig. 4), I strove to obtain a sense of landscape in the process of becoming by means of irregular outlines, blurred washes of areas of color that overlap each other. In regard to this work A. Crispo wrote: 'The artist has drawn on memories, sometimes with a vision of the earth and life when our planet first became part of the consciousness of man. This painting is concerned with the dawn of life on earth' [5].

My awareness of the panorama of art in time past and of the change and renewal of forms in nature animate my work. These realities are a constant source of fascination to me.

References

1. Herbert Read, The Origins in Form in Art (New York: Horizon Press, 1965).

2. A. Crispo in C. Polsky exhibition catalog (New York: Andrew Crispo Gallery, 1974).

3. C. Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).

4. H. Seldis in C. Polsky exhibition catalog (Palm Springs, Calif.: Palm Springs Desert Museum, 1973).

5. A. Crispo in C. Polsky exhibition catalog (New York: Andrew Crispo Gallery, 1974.

Fig. 3. 'Sunday Earth', acrylic paint on aluminum sheet, 7 x 6 ft., 1973.

Fig. 4. 'Serengeti', acrylic paint on canvas, 7 x 6 ft., 1973.

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Top: Jacques Decaux. 'Mary' (name in Chinese 'seal' characters), enamel on copper, 50 x 80 cm., 1966. (Fig. 1, cf. page 41.)

Centre, left: Barbara Hero. 'Tone F' of the series 'Fifths Depicted on Squares', acrylic paint on canvas, 24 x 24 in., 1973. (Fig. 6, cf. page 18.)

Centre, right: Dick Cook. ' Whistling Dixie', audio-kinetic object, Luminetic system, Plexiglas cube, Formica base, incandescent lamps, 24 x 14 x 14 in., 1971. (Photo: G. de Grazio, Thibodaux,

LA, U.S.A.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 2.) Bottom: Cynthia Polsky. 'Grotto, II', acrylic paint on canvas, 42 x 122 in., 1973. (Fig. 1, cf.

page 53.) [facing p. 20]


















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Notes on My Recent Lyrical Expressionist Paintings