Helen Frankenthaler
Recently I have been reminded of Helen Frankenthaler, by my former Graduate Professor, Denzil Hurley. Looking at her work, I see a parallel interest to mine in her use of color and shape found illuminated by the light in Nature. Her minimal color field and gestural language is inspiring me to dissolve the artifice of landscape in my work. In an article by James Panero, The NewCriterion, http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Gallery-chronicle-3991 (January 2009) he wrote about Frankenthaler:
“Frankenthaler is the American Fauve, and she shares several similarities with Henri Matisse. Both artists staked their claim in color rather than tone, and both artists have been accused of bourgeois sentiment, choosing to channel their energies directly into their work rather than into their biographies. For Frankenthaler this process became quite literal. She never battled her way to a high style. There were no decades of experimentation before arriving at a signature work; her signature work began as experimentation filtered through her artistic intuition. Experimentation, in fact, has been the one quality that has defined her oeuvre as she has gone from painting to drawing to printmaking to metal sculpture to pottery and back again.”
Although Frankenthaler is always categorized as an Abstract Expressionist, I think of her as a process artist, based on her work being driven by experimentation. Also guided my by intuition, I see this as the reason that my work seems to constantly change from series to series because I take the next indicated step based on my questions and exploration. Once I discover something and have seemingly worn out all the possibilities within a series, I follow the next question. My husband Brian has always joked about my inability to stay with what my audiences respond to. I also have discovered that I was unable to create the work my commercial gallery wanted me to, nor fulfill commissions that did not fit into what I was exploring at that moment.
I have always wondered if this stubbornness in me has been hurting me in my career, but again and again I return back to my artistic integrity and place the importance of the process over a formulaic outcome. I now understand that it is not my exploration that undermines my work, but rather that I have not trusted my intuition and followed my practice without worrying about the outcome of my career. It has held me back and filled me with doubt in the past.
Frankenthaler, has always put the principle of art making before her ego and perhaps for that reason has had little lime light in contrast to her contemporaries. Yet, she remains to be one of the leading female artist to enter into the history of art, and will prove to do so well beyond her living days. It is with Frankenthaler and other artists whose focus is on the process of the work, with whom I align my artistic ethos with.
Helen Frankenthaler, A Green Thought in a Green Shade (1981), © Helen Frankenthaler / courtesy Knoedler & Company
Danila Rumold, Glacier Source, Watercolor on Panel, 2011, Courtesy of I|M|A Gallery
Helen Frankenthaler, Midnight, 1986 Etching and aquatint on Magnani paper Editions size: 71 Paper size: 32 x 25 1/2 inches
Danila Rumold, "Way to Blue", Oil on Canvas, 24" x 24", 2001, Courtesy of the Private collection of Shawn Conroy
