From 1974 to 1997, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) lived and worked between New York and Shippan Point in Stamford, Connecticut. Yet, during the summers of 1990 and 1991, she was master-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico. In the midst of the landscapes of these opposite coasts, both in climate and in spirit, she deepens the formal and affective scope of her pictorial investigations. “Drawing in Nature: Paintings from the 1990s” offers an insight into this late period of the artist’s work.
In Western Roadmap, 1991, a gray-purple cloud floats like a storm over an arid land. Dollops of gel medium and thick impasto catch the edges of a softer brush, creating a sense of revision and change – the thickly worked material hovers above a diffuse array of evanescent spots. The cascades of purple, white and brown in Magnet, 1992, however, have been combed through with a hard-edged rake. Forged with startling bravery, Frankenthaler streaks across the surface, spreading the paint as it scrapes it off, leaving behind sediment and grit. From one edge of the canvas, a band of aqua quietly holds the amorphous composition in place.
Vespers, 1992, is a smaller but no less whimsical work. An ash-gray patch lies beneath a thick layer of white paint, with various clumps settling like silt in a nighttime sea. The clusters seem accidental, as if they were floaters drifting across our field of vision; nevertheless, they were placed with extreme discernment.
Frankenthaler never directly rendered any form of landscape; instead, she let her memories emerge through the painting itself, evoking the feeling of a place in both spirit and matter. She has witnessed the unexpected in her art and has spent her life exploring its endless permutations.
