Paintings by Mary Mayhew
In an ambitious new show, full of shining light and expressive faces, Mary Mayhew pays tribute to life’s simple joys, particularly those associated with family and friends.
As most can attest, these joys are truly at the heart of life. Inescapably there is sadness too, because what comes ultimately goes; what warms the heart can fade. Many of Mayhews’ characters look towards the viewer and even smile, as if to share simple moments of connection. Just as many of Mayhews’ characters, however, turn away, as if beginning a journey that can include our sympathies, but not us.
In Mayhew's paintings, human connection seems to be the very breath of life; coming, going, coming, going. In a kind of floating reality, souls come together, move apart, come together, move apart. One feels that there will always be stories to tell. It turns out that sharing can happen in many different ways and making art is one of those ways.
Working largely from photographs, Mayhew's amplifies what she finds particularly meaningful. In two beautiful images of her mother before cancer and after cancer, Mayhews shows us that something is lost but something is also gained, even through such an intense struggle. In the latter image, Mayhews’ mother seems further away but somehow also more present.
In painting after painting by Mayhew, one feels that life is full of changes, rites of passage, one might say, or even gateways. These passages can seem sunny and beckoning, as in a painting where a child and her grandfather seem to be turning a corner, preoccupied together with a fence-repairing task, a teaching moment.
But life passages aren’t always easy and can even be a little bit frightening. A dancer looks into a mirror, perhaps wondering if she is beautiful, perhaps wondering what beauty is. Instead of answering her, the mirror seems to look back darkly, deepening the question and allowing anxiety to creep in. Such questions seem to ask what the future is, but the future remains inescapably unknowable.
Two paintings of boats on water seem to suggest that the future is a beckoning shore, dark and mysterious, but promising. The passage between past and future is where we float. We find togetherness there. Shared moments exist there. It is by appreciating those moments that we find we can make them last. The future beckons but we don’t have to be in a hurry to get there all the time.
Mayhew works in both acrylics and oils in a watercolor style, mostly with thin washes. But she has also been experimenting with impasto effects, particularly in this painting …
This is perhaps my favorite painting in the show, perhaps because it has an uncanny quality that reminds me of my childhood. It is an exquisite painting, both radiant and dark. A youngster seems to be flying off the end of a playground slide, which somehow seems to be at the same time a dark uncanny shape that seems to live both inside some sort of room and outside in a play area. The painting is entitled “Flying”, but i think of it just as much about “falling”.
The way I remember childhood, things that were exciting and thrilling, like slides, were somehow just a little bit dark, just a little bit scary, and that was part of the reason it was fun -- like when you spun around to get dizzy and just for one tiny moment you wondered if reality would ever settle back down around you -- do you remember that? I do.
Was I just a strange kid?
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