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Lesa C. Lim at F.A.N. Gallery
Poet in a landscape
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
The first thing I noticed about Lesa Chittenden Lim’s work is the nice balance she maintains between abstraction and reality. Christmas lights and dreams—that’s what occurred to me. Upon closer examination they reminded me a bit of Egon Schiele’s landscapes, although only Spring seemed especially derivative. In all of Lim’s works, her quality of abstraction flows naturally from the artist’s graphic style. It doesn’t seem especially thought-out.
As one would expect in an exhibition given over largely to landscapes, this show includes a number of season-specific paintings, including some lovely winter landscapes. But a few, such as Balance of Life and Nocturne in Blue, transcend any season. These are true dreamscapes.
The exhibition also includes example of the still-life; and in the series Reflection (#1-3), Lim derives tremendous visual mileage from props as simple as a bare table top, a glass of water, and a few sprigs of flowers. In fact, these paintings share the overall ethereal quality of the landscapes— and an ethereal still life is an uncommon thing. Something about the genre seems to cry out for solidity and an earthbound quality.
If there is a key to the visual language of the show, I would say that it’s the piece entitled After Graduation. It can be viewed as the visual prototype for everything that follows. In it you find the same stripped-down visual vocabulary—a hill, any hill; a tree, any tree— but here it’s much more rugged and possesses a mass that anchors it firmly in place. The colors, too, are much bolder, and contrast more sharply. One can see that if the techniques used in this piece were pursued, replicated and refined, one would at length arrive at a piece like Balance of Life.
I’ve always preferred landscapes over any other genre of painting, and the less photographic, the more open to the wanderings of my mind, the better I like them. Lesa Chittenden Lim is my type of artist.
ANDREW MANGRAVITE
The first thing I noticed about Lesa Chittenden Lim’s work is the nice balance she maintains between abstraction and reality. Christmas lights and dreams—that’s what occurred to me. Upon closer examination they reminded me a bit of Egon Schiele’s landscapes, although only Spring seemed especially derivative. In all of Lim’s works, her quality of abstraction flows naturally from the artist’s graphic style. It doesn’t seem especially thought-out.
As one would expect in an exhibition given over largely to landscapes, this show includes a number of season-specific paintings, including some lovely winter landscapes. But a few, such as Balance of Life and Nocturne in Blue, transcend any season. These are true dreamscapes.
The exhibition also includes example of the still-life; and in the series Reflection (#1-3), Lim derives tremendous visual mileage from props as simple as a bare table top, a glass of water, and a few sprigs of flowers. In fact, these paintings share the overall ethereal quality of the landscapes— and an ethereal still life is an uncommon thing. Something about the genre seems to cry out for solidity and an earthbound quality.
If there is a key to the visual language of the show, I would say that it’s the piece entitled After Graduation. It can be viewed as the visual prototype for everything that follows. In it you find the same stripped-down visual vocabulary—a hill, any hill; a tree, any tree— but here it’s much more rugged and possesses a mass that anchors it firmly in place. The colors, too, are much bolder, and contrast more sharply. One can see that if the techniques used in this piece were pursued, replicated and refined, one would at length arrive at a piece like Balance of Life.
I’ve always preferred landscapes over any other genre of painting, and the less photographic, the more open to the wanderings of my mind, the better I like them. Lesa Chittenden Lim is my type of artist.
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