If The Plants Don't Make It, How Will We?

If The Plants Don't Make It, How Will We?				Main Gallery			Feb 3 - Feb 28, 2007

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	The End of the World As We Know It: The Botanical Paintings of Joseph Kinnebrew, Rowann Villency, and Katharine Pappas-Parks There has been so much writing on the imminent ecological crisis that we find ourselves buried in apocalyptic warnings concerning global warming, the melting of the Arctic ice caps, and the loss of wild habitat. Given the other problems the world is facing--the catastrophic invasion into Iraq among them--it would be easy to downplay the moral choices facing us as we slide into a bizarre acceptance of the end of the world as we know it. Despite conservative commentary undermining the inconvenience of hard facts about the atmosphere and increased temperatures worldwide, the truth about our conditions on earth is increasingly buttressed by scientific fact. For those of us who have matured into middle age, the future decades may be tolerable in the sense that we may survive without experiencing too much hardship. But the tragic reality is that our children will suffer greatly from our diminished resources. The moment necessary for changing habits is now, and one can only hope that the change is not too late. In the presence of such demanding circumstances, how can the artist contribute to a politicized awareness of ecological doom? The tradition of contemporary art is deeply political, but it has primarily existed as a heightened awareness of issues such as identity and minority responses to majority culture. While there has been some recognition of the environment as a major theme for the committed artist, it is very hard for Americans to make directly political art, in large part simply because of the very privilege that makes them cognizant of the need for change. Politically speaking, the best socially aware, contemporary American art has often been indirect in nature, ironically trading on realities which we have too often accepted but which we actually need to resist. The primary emphasis of American culture, based upon extreme forms of individuality and can-do attitudes, needs to be critiqued so that the problems of energy consumption and mass indifference can be explored. What art can do is raise awareness, and so the showing of botanical paintings, by Joseph Kinnebrew, Rowann Villency, and Katherine Pappas-Parks, at Walter Wickiser Gallery represents an attempt to report sanely on the beauties of the landscape, both large and small. Kinnebrew’s visionary studies see nature as a world filled with vigorous, unseen energies that we can only suggest in the world of art. His tulips are extraordinarily beautiful, and he even finds a way of making a red cabbage seem glorious. His is a sensibility devoted to what he sees; the content of his art is at least as important as the way he paints it. Sensitive colorwise to the expressiveness of nature, Kinnebrew exercises his brush in ways that can even seem excessively stylized, in the hopes that the image will overwhelm its viewers. His botanical studies exist to fire the mind of his audience, so that they too will respond to nature’s elegant, sometimes overwhelming beauty. Villency uses mixed media, including oil, acrylic, and stencil, for her lush paintings of flora in gardens. Her images of foliage, stems, and trees are in a romantic mode that not only reflects the traditions of Western painting but gives the nod to Asian art as well. In her moderate-size works, Villency produces lyrical garden studies that emphasize the particulars of nature, for example, the sharp outlines of leaves. Her language, with its passages of dark and light forms, appropriates dual expressions to give voice to what can be seen as the complexity of nature. Pappas-Parks presents us with visionary views of landscape that seems both real and imagined. Her bright colors are so intense as to initially appear artificial, yet there is a real sense of place to her series, which is created with oil paint and gold leaf. As the result of using these materials, Pappas-Parks creates a luminous vision, in which nature is both literally and metaphorically glowing. The works of these three artists do not address politics directly, but by simply choosing botany as their painting subject, they suggest a direct concern with some of the ecological problems facing us. There is a deliberate beauty to the art of all three painters, who are reading the world with genuine wonder. It proves hard to say whether their work will manage to politicize their viewers, but it is clear that their concerns may be effectively used to promote not only awareness of but also action against the future pollution of the planet, which seems to be sliding toward its own destruction. It is unfair to demand of artists that they directly politicize their vision; at the same time, it is more and more difficult for art to refer to art alone. If we see this show as a warning that the beauties of landscape are deeply imperiled, perhaps we can be driven to act ourselves. And while this is probably not the immediate goal of the three artists, surely they would not resent an interpretation that brings ecological problems to light. They are too good as painters not to see the possibilities of another dimension of their art, and too attached to the natural world to be indifferent to its fate. Jonathan Goodman