 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Back to Reviews At first glance, Abbott's big watercolors at Gallery K seem like the kind of generic photorealism that abounds at summer art fairs across America. But prolonged viewing of her richly colored, highly detailed works yields a different conclusion: These are complex, alluring abstractions. A number of things set Abbott's paintings apart, beginning with her virtuosity. There simply aren't many watercolorists in America who can match her level of technical expertise. Watercolor is a tricky, unforgiving medium, but Abbott can apparently make it do anything she wants. What makes her paintings so interesting, however, is the peculiar tension between the dazzling display of skill and the underlying idea. Abbott seems to establish a faux autobiographical narrative that leads the viewer all over the picture, then leaves them to draw their own conclusions. It's an impressive feat. Abbott does it in each of these paintings by depicting a tabletop still life, a subject whose triteness would seem to rival another art fair staple, the old barn with a Mail Pouch advertisement painted on it. However, her still lifes are consistently fresh, in part because the scenes are painted from peculiar viewing angles, usually slightly off center and from above, as if her easel were on top of a stepladder. The unusual perspective makes it seem as though one is flying over the picture, looking down on the wealth of imagery. And a wealth it is. Every painting is jammed with flowers, fruit, vegetables, figures, text, teacups, dishes, letters, books, tablecloths, carpets, magazines, househoid implements and other paintings. There is so much appealing stuff that the viewer can't avoid getting pulled in to read the postcards, marvel at the perfect eggplants and admire the oriental rugs. It would seem that the layers of imagery encompass a narrative, specifically an autobiography. And the images are indeed drawn from Abbott's life. She is a native Washingtonian who moved four years ago to a farm in Vermont's Green Mountains, a move inspired, according to her press materials, "by the desire to live in closer contact with nature." Understandably, the Vermont landscape appears in several of the paintings. Abbott has also traveled through southern France and Italy in the past two years, so there are bits and pieces of Italy and Provence in some of the paintings. Yet all the images don't really add up to form a coherent narrative, autobiographical or otherwise. The paintings tell us a lot about the artist. She drinks tea, likes flowers, enjoys fine paintings, owns a deck of tarot cards and has friends who write eloquent letters and postcards. But through it all, one gets to know almost nothing about who Abbott really is, what she thinks, what she feels. All we know is what we see on those tabletops. It's that detachment, that distancing, that makes her work abstract. Beneath the beguiling surface and the welter of imagery abstracted from her daily life, these are paintings about painting, fantastic studies of form and color, whose meaning can be almost anything the viewer wants. |
