By Gary Brady-Herndon
"In an exhibition now on display at the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, St. Helena painter Claire Kirkconnell effortlessly bridges the gap between artist and patron by delving into the universal desire for safety, security and shelter. How she accomplishes this feat is an artistic slight-of-hand that will pull you into her dark, beautiful world that is as near as your backdoor and as removed from reality as a vision from another dimension.
While Kirkconnell employs ample talent and tools by which she gets her point across, her unique methodology of implying more than she actually presents to her audience is her best asset. The result forces us all to put ourselves in the position of viewing through her eyes the scene she represents. The effect is one of pulling the viewer into the painting, no longer simply on the outside looking in, but a participant who must actively engage the artist's message to understand the totality of the effect her work produces.
With 18 paintings on display, Kirkconnell presents them in sets of two, three or four groupings focused on similar but disparate themes. Each set is seen from the perspective of looking into a scene through, between or from behind screens, trees or windowpanes. The obstacles themselves are meaningful only in the barrier they present to the viewer's overall experience and hold a deeper psychological meaning the artist uses to project her message.
"I believe we put up a veil (in our lives) — our own personal baggage or screen — through which we view the world," Kirkconnell said.
In the "Looking Through" series, the audience finds themselves staring out of a window into a storm in the dead of night. Dark, amorphous figures presented in shades of blue effectively represent a towering tree line. Rivulets of rainwater course down the windowpane, heightening the sense of dislocation from the outside world, while the pale yellow of lights burning in a house in the middle distance gives assurance that we are not alone. The scene is at once eerie, yet comforting, cold and foreboding but peaceful.
Kirkconnell adroitly addresses the themes of security, safety and shelter in all of her paintings with this clever juxtaposition of the viewer standing apart from the immediacy of the action but still a part of the whole. She transmits the idea there is safety and security within the shelter of our own little worlds as we try to make sense of the unknown larger universe around us.
The message is not, however, one of paranoia or a call to reclusively sequester ourselves from the world, but one of inclusion and adventure. Granted, while the scenes she depicts are at times eerie and slightly foreboding, they are in fact what any of us might see through the panes of rain-splattered windows in our own homes or through the screen door as we gaze into the evening across our backyard into the neighbor's. Her paintings represent liberation from the barriers we place on our own comfort zone and the way we view the world.
"My paintings raise more questions than answers about safety, security and shelter. What's outside seems dangerous at times, especially at night, but it's safe to go out there," Kirkconnell said. "Safety is realizing nothing is going to seal you off from the outside."
In the three paintings included in the series, "Screened," a weather-beaten screen replaces the rain-streaked windowpane as the viewer looks into the night. The ever-present dark landscape and looming houses with lights blazing float in the distance obscured in a hazy halo of mysteriousness by the presence of the screen. Here, however, Kirkconnell gives her audience a hint that the barrier may not be the inviolate buffer we may think it is in real life. Small jagged holes mar the surface of the screen, giving us a glimpse of the real world unfettered and free from the dilutive effect created by the screen, a view hinting of the larger consciousness outside our restrictive attempts to filter access to our own private realities.
Kirkconnell has a past filled with success. Born in Texas, she spent several years of her youth living in Mexico City. Graduating from high school in Houston, she moved to California to study art and to develop her skills as a painter. Stints as an international fashion model and a television career as the female lead in the dramatic series, "The Paper Chase," followed.
With the birth of her son 13 years ago, Kirkconnell said she and her husband, a film director based in Southern California, decided to change their lifestyle. Not wanting to raise their son in the Los Angeles area, the couple began to search for a small town where they could balance the quality of life they desired, yet allow her husband an easy commute back to Los Angeles when work called. St. Helena, Kirkconnell said, provided the best possible compromise. Changing lifestyles also meant an opportunity to devote more time to her passion for painting.
"Once we moved to the Napa Valley it became clear I wanted to do what I love," Kirkconnell said in reference to her reinvigorated career as a painter.
As her expertise grew, Kirkconnell began a process of painting over her canvases, allowing the first coat to dry, then painting over the dried colors. This she said, allows her to scrape away the top layer to reveal the paint beneath, adding another dimension to the overall effect her paintings produce.
"I knew I wanted to work more with surface action. Scraping the paint away to discover what's underneath is very exciting," Kirkconnell said.
By employing this technique, she incorporates the paint revealed beneath the surface into the actual design and content of the finished painting. Examples abound of this technique throughout the show, but no better than in the series "Through Trees." In the third painting in the series, all of which are set in dark muted nighttime scenes, Kirkconnell produces brilliant points of light reflected in the distance and foreground by scraping the paint away to suggest the presence of warmth and glowing illumination. In stark contrast to the dark green, rich blue and black pigments found on the surface of the painting representing the sky and trees, the uncovered yellow and red pigments from beneath seem to erupt onto the canvas' surface.
Visitors who attend the exhibition will find Kirkconnell's talent for capturing the moment consistent through a number of themes all based on the benign, yet voyeuristic, act of looking onto the scenes she shares with us. A guaranteed crowd pleaser, the series titled "Between the Spaces" shows the range and technical ability she brings to the canvas above and beyond her ability to evoke emotional response within us as she does in the other series.
In the three sets in the series, Kirkconnell presents five paintings in all, each with a decidedly Asian feel. Straight, slender bamboo-like trees stand unadorned, highlighted only by the uncharacteristic choice of color combinations she uses to bring them to life. In the third of the series, two paintings with backgrounds of cobalt blue pigments of lacqueresque quality, act as a subdued foil for the powder blue bark of the trees, highlighted with rust colored spots spaced randomly along the trees' surface. The trees stand as a testament to Kirkconnell's ability to breathe life into the ordinary to create a thing of beauty. A talent she exhibits over and over again throughout the entire show."
From the Kelly's Cove Press Website:
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