Charlene Von Heyl

Abstraction can provide meaning through color, composition, and markmaking. I can see an element of poetry in this exhibition, each piece has a rhythm and flow to it. The scale and interaction of the marks create a story. This artist likes to juxtapose colors fading into one another like clouds with spots of bright color and solid almost ruler like shapes. There seems to be optimism in her work, like something is breaking out from its grey barren world and expressing itself. It looks as if someone is breaking out from a crowd and becoming an individual. From this artist, I get a question of who do you want to be and can you become an individual. It seems to be about breaking out from the mold and becoming the person that you were meant to become. She seems to try to express the different emotions of humans, silly, serious, angry, quiet, loud, goofy, etc. in different paintings to try to make people understand that it is ok to be your true self whatever that might be. I think that meaning is dependent on the person who is looking at the work. My background and how I am feeling the day I view the work taints it. Realistic art has a way of making the person reflect on the artist's view of a subject. Whereas, abstract art offers introspection. The fact that everything is not told to you gives a way for the artist to ask a question and for the viewer to reflect on that. It also has the ability to always be current. Seeing a piece on one day in one state of mind and on another day will give you totally different ideas about the work and about yourself.

here and now exhibition

The markmaking in this gallery was interesting. I really liked the ones that were all about markmaking, not including photographs or drawing. I felt that the ones that included photography were not integrated well. They did not add anything additional to the pieces and seemed only to lie on top of an already existing piece of art. I felt this way about the calligraphy style marks on top of the photographs. The calligraphy was really strong on its own and when combined with the photographs, it made a weak piece. The work that was the strongest for me were the pieces that created a new meaning by incorporating the markmaking and it seemed like one could not live without the other. The piece that used different color marks like plants, fish, and birds to create a landscape felt like a full piece. Also the work that used hair-like lines to create food. Those pieces took on a different meaning through the markmaking.