Assessment by Elana Hagler, visitor contributor
Elise Schweitzer, Caelian Hill, gouache on paper 12 x 9 inches
Laura Vahlberg, Playground Hut, oil on linen on board, 5.5 x 3.5 inches
Motherhood, particularly in these very early years, has a manner of paring life all the way down to its necessities. These first years are notoriously tough for folks, and moms particularly (who traditionally have borne the brunt of childcare and home life), who’re additionally making an attempt to pursue their life’s work. Life turns into about feeding, cleansing, sleeping when/if doable, and gazing on the miraculous mundane. Infants the world over have fingers, eyes, candy folds of chub, downy bits of hair, and but every in a singular and theretofore unseen mixture. So, too, do the artworks, the artistic offspring of those two younger moms, the painters Elise Schweitzer and Laura Vahlberg, distill the visible world into its most elementary components in a joyful however critical perceptual recreation.
Simply as their five-year-old youngsters play collectively, Schweitzer and Vahlberg’s work have a playful dialogue with each other throughout the gallery partitions. There’s a kinship to the work, ensuing from mutual influences reminiscent of Joseph Albers, Charles Hawthorne, and Edwin Dickinson. There may be the strain between depicting air and depth and the assertion of the flatness of the image aircraft. There may be the simplification of kinds into their important coloration spots and the delicate tuning of delicate coloration relationships.
Elise Schweitzer,Isola Tiberina, gouache on paper, 12 x 9 inches
Laura Vahlberg, Wet Day, oil on linen on board, 6.5 x 3.75 inches
The poetry of portray inhabits the tensions between these contradictions: flat versus spatial, simplified shapes versus refined colours, rooted within the historic language of portray and in these works perceived afresh. Vahlberg’s work echoes the simplified kinds, muted colours, and tangible surfaces of the landscapes of Giorgio Morandi, Albert York, and E. M. Saniga. Likewise, Schweitzer’s work evoke the angular, stylized structure of early Renaissance painters like Piero della Francesca, and the simplified however at all times atmospheric landscapes of Diana Horowitz.
Elise Schweitzer, Ter Borch Inexperienced, gouache on canvas, 8 x 10 inches
Laura Vahlberg, Mall, oil on linen on board, 9.25 x 14.5 inches
As youngsters develop, the intimate world of milky breath and comfortable peach fuzz expands to rigorously sliced grapes, clumsy first makes an attempt at socializing, and rooms which might be slowly swallowed by the ever-growing muddle of toys. Schweitzer’s landscapes recall to mind the simplified types of early constructing blocks, drawing a juxtaposition between the frequent, shut, and small with historic, huge architectural kinds. Valhberg’s work is harking back to board books for toddlers, with simplified shapes and essentialized colours. On the similar time, her work are a results of internalizing all that deep painterly data and of making an attempt to view the seen world with a recent and harmless eye. At the same time as we nurture and train our kids, the extra delicate we’re, the extra we additionally study from them: we study to forged off that which is unessential; we study to embrace the second; we study to thrill within the extraordinary. And we study that life, as heavy as it may be, is elevated when approached with a way of curiosity and earnest appreciation.
Elise Schweitzer, Venice Underwater, gouache on paper, the gathering of 4 collectively is 16 x 20 inches
Laura Vahlberg, Mid-Morning Solar, canvas on board, 19 x 17.25 inches
Elise Schweitzer and Laura Vahlberg’s work will likely be exhibited at Steven Francis Advantageous Arts in Lynchburg, VA, from October 6, 2024 to November 16, 2024.