Some paintings

The other day, we took ourselves out for a treat at Zambri’s to celebrate some finished exams. After a while, I noticed the display of paintings on the walls, all by Diana Dean, a local (Saltspring Island) painter. As someone who has received enough innoculation (via theory) against liking representational paintings, I usually give “realistic” pictures short shrift, but Dean’s work struck me as instantly compelling. I’m still not sure if I’m just losing my grip, or if they really are not just exceptionally different, but also exceptionally good. I’m putting three of her paintings on the blog (hope she doesn’t mind); to see more of her work, visit her website and click on the thumbnails.

First, there’s Still Life with Eggplant, which plays with spatial relations in a mind-bending way:

And there’s Lake Picnic, from Dean’s “recent” list.

This one comes close to driving me away with its overt references to the Holy Family (and St. John the Baptist hovering in the background), which make it feel too “sweet” for my taste. On the other hand, I might feel differently if faced with the real painting, for the paintings don’t come across as well in reproduction on the computer screen. It also seems to me that Zambri’s had work on the walls which I can’t find on Dean’s website, so it might be the case that I saw really recent work which just isn’t up yet. The paintings I saw last week rivetted me with their geometry and intriguing handling of pictorial space, which gave all the work a plasticity and presence I usually associate with architecture or sculpture. That heft is palpable in the still life (above), which reworks early Cézanne beautifully, all while winking and nodding at art history as it plays with the “signifiers.” [Hint: note the way the chair-back on the left is cut off to echo the picture frame; the frame (within a frame) of the picture seen at the very top of the painting, which reinforces the rectangular shape of Still Life‘s frame; the table legs mirroring the chair leg, in turn reiterating the verticals of the painting’s frame; and then the diagonals flattened into that pictorial space, diagonals emphasised via the landscape painting-within-the-painting on the right and the diagonals of table-cloth stripes, floor, and rug.] In Lake Picnic (also above), I’m impressed by Dean’s ability to take a time-worn iconography and translate it into a local setting: that’s clearly recognisable BC coastal scenery, right down to the orange trunks of Arbutus menziesii (or Madrona) trees.

Here’s one more (a detail, according to the website), called The Serving Woman, which conveys the architectural plasticity that grabbed my attention at the restaurant:

The woman has the solidity of an ancient column, her arms and her uniform provides the doric fluting, her cap the simple doric capital. Yet, very uncolumn-like, she leans toward the table, …to blow out the candle?, to get close to the sword-like leaves of the plant set in an urn? Behind that deracinated plant we see a landscape — “real” or “painted”? Everything is set into a strict geometry, as though trying to teach us to see. Quite wonderful, in a “primitive” sort of way — and I mean “primitive” in the way the early Italian Renaissance painters, conquering geometric perspective, were. Masaccio comes to mind, here and here. Like the Italians, who were not afraid of size, some of Dean’s best work is ambitiously huge, definitely not meant to hang decoratively over the sofa, but meant instead to fill a wall and hold the viewer’s attention. I like that.