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Dana James Hollywood, 2017, ink, dye, oil, encaustic, pigment on canvas 72 x 60 inches.
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Dana James: Sometimes Seen Dreams
October 18 - November 12, 2017
The Lodge Gallery
131 Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002
At first look Dana James’s new work seems serenely
atmospheric. But what appears quiet is quickly shown to be a seething,
turbulent conduit to imagined memories, locations and lives unlike the artist’s
own.
James has previously explored her curiosity about others’
lives and their experiences of Americana, televisions, swimming pools and other
trappings of suburbia. But, this new body of work casts off a bit from a more
grounded reality to forge links to dreamier images that approach the silent
longing and restless searching of the sublime.
This mood is facilitated by the paint staining application used
to cover the canvases. The lyrical
technique brings out an elegant immutability while James’s palette utilizes
pale pinks and rolling, deep blues to give form to her restless “recollections” and
murky possible futures.
At the bottom of the large vertical works, small portions of
raw canvas, built up wax and inks operate as counterweights to a sense of
yearning by grounding the viewer and providing a solid, visceral foundation for
what seem to be depictions of raw earth and pools of water.
These sometimes glowing masses anchor the viewer fast to the
bottom third of the composition while her gaze is drawn up into the top two
thirds. This gives the feeling of standing in a cathedral and alludes, with
great effect, to similar pictorial formats found in works by Rothko and el
Greco. The latter painter often divided a canvas by placing an earthly scene at
the bottom of a work and a more visionary scene at the top.
This new and exciting body of work offers a more layered and
deeper look at subjects and forms that have long interested James and establishes
her as a painter unafraid to plumb the depths of her imagination and join what
she finds to a rough Romanticism and a sharp color field fluidity.
