Color. Color pools, flows, drips in Karen Holtzclaw's new paintings at the Bellevue Gallery at the Farmer House Museum in Bloomington, Indiana. Liquid color. Bright color.
Amidst blooms uncanny beings appear. A grotesque mask with enormous teeth haunts one painting. In another painting, a flower bedecked skull seems to have driven everything else in the painting into the opposite corner. These creatures are not really so scary though. The mask seems lonely. The skull seems to be having a bit of harmless fun. A curious bird seems to lurch across another painting, like Big Bird in Sesame Street, only smaller. In two paintings a cherub seems to beam blessings over the other contents of the paintings. A sombrero'd sleeper hides from the hot sun created for his world by a table lamp.
Mexico on My Mind is a show of still life paintings triggered by the rising xenophobia of our times, as exemplified by Trump's 'Great Again" Wall between the United States and Mexico. Karen has never been to Mexico and makes no pretense that her paintings are about Mexico itself. The still life paintings in Mexico on My Mind are about craft objects she has collected over the years, objects that somehow spoke to her in yard sales and goodwill shops.
Part of Karen's goal in making these paintings was simply to listen to objects that she had collected. If they spoke to her, what did they say? At the same time, Karen's approach to these paintings addressed the root of xenophobia; Karen's paintings represent a deeply loving fantasy about Mexico. They may even say something about Mexico itself, because she is a keen and thoughtful observer who paints with a lot of heart. But they say a lot more about Karen's hopes and dreams. This same disconnect, neither good nor bad in itself, lies at the heart of xenophobia, at the heart of dreams much darker than Karen's dreams.
For me, Karen's paintings are a delightful reflection of the baroque spirit that art and crafts from south of the border' often seem to have. The Baroque period may have been the all time glory period of European art and architecture, in a way. What is often forgotten is that some of the greatest art, architecture and craft of the Baroque period was created in Latin America. Even at its most austere and disciplined (think Bernini), Baroque was a style of overripe profusion. Latin America seemed to take this aspect of Baroque art and run with it.
The delight of such profusion literally fills Karen's paintings in Mexico On My Mind. Objects, necklaces, flowers and colored crepe paper jostle the picture plane, sparking a pleasurable claustrophobia. Colors seem to be on the verge of sliding off the objects they are on, but they barely stay put. Patterns too seem ready to jump from surface to surface, but don't quite. Beads spill from background to foreground and back again.
These are still lifes that are not still. Perhaps Karen means to say that we should not stifle the joy of life with the rigidities of walls of exclusion and the xenophobic attitudes behind them.
