Florence Putterman

Metaphoric Fables

Walter Wickiser Gallery, Inc.
210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 303
New York, NY 10001
212.941.1817

http://www.walterwickisergallery.com/index.html

Catalogue available upon request

Artist's Statement : Florence Putterman

My paintings and works on paper have long explored how to develop a modern visual equivalent to the deeply felt interrelationship of earth and cosmos sacred to primitive cultures. I work with thick broad shapes and strong vivid colors and sensuous surfaces to create dense symbol-filled pictures. They do not always depict a certain event, but suggest. They don’t speak directly but presuppose in the mind knowledge of an event or fact. In the process of working these symbols together, sometimes narratives emerge, but are not planned at the outset. Themes of good and evil, comedy and tragedy, philosophical and global concerns on the fate of the earth and the species that inhabit it, are all evident in these works.

My canvases are painted on a textured surface of crushed shells and sand. These are prepared with coats of gesso and then the sand is applied and allowed to harden. This surface is then encased with several more coats of gesso and an acrylic medium. This is set aside to dry for a few weeks and then the canvases are ready to receive paint.

I examine the world through my painting. And my work usually springs from an actual experience visually recalled and made permanent. They can also be a sort of reverie bringing back many recurring memories from earlier works involving the non-verbal communicative symbols of early man studied during my National Endowment grant in 1979, mingled with childhood visions and dreams. My themes and images are concerned with man, his environment and his interrelationships with all living creatures.

My work began with an exploration of nature, sometimes seen close-up and sometimes at a distance. My focus then shifted to an investigation of certain basic forms that occur in nature, resulting in more abstract works. Gradually I returned to human forms and narratives involving humankind and all creatures that inhabit the earth. My interest and explorations in the monotype medium began in the early seventies and I continue to learn new facets of this exciting medium, each day. Sometimes I transfer the images from paper to canvas and sometimes I do paintings with themes from the monotypes. My monotypes are created by painting on formica or previously etched plates and then transferring the image through a press. I then continue working on the piece with colored pencils, oil pastels or paint. The addition of drawing further tightens the composition and heightens the feeling of special energy in the work.

When I am painting, I am only aware of the canvas and what it tells me to do. I am not as concerned with actual representation of images as much as I am concerned with arousing the senses of the viewer. I like to work in series with similar images in each painting but varying these images by focusing on different ideas and connections in each work. In all the works there is an urgent plea for the earth interspersed with a reminiscent look back.

Commentary by: Eleanor Heartney

*E1eanor Heartney is a contributing editor to Art in America and author of critical Condition: American culture at the crossroads, published by Cambridge University Press

In the Realm of the Imagination

In their ebullience and unaffected optimism, the paintings of Florence Putterman recall the free wheeling inventiveness of the early Modernists. Having broken all the rules of painting, those pioneers of abstraction fashioned a new artistic language with which to express the remarkable changes sweeping in with the dawn of the twentieth century.

Today, at the approach of another century, Putterman’s paintings exude a similar careening, feckless energy. Poised between abstraction and recognition, everything in sight appears to be undergoing marvelous transformations. Putterman has imagined a world in which fishes brush up against foxes and spinning orbs roll across landscapes replete with figures, forms and not quite identifiable creatures. At times, we feel plunged into a mysterious underwater realm, where creatures existing in a state somewhere between plant and animal drift lazily in the deep sea currents. In a another moment we are transported to a parched desert, where the blazing sunlight picks up specks of color and gives them an unnatural glow. In these paintings, nothing is static, everything is subject to change, and an invisible energy animates all.

Often the vibrant colors are held within thick black outlines which describe forms teetering on the brink of recognizability. Or lines may stand on their own, proudly abstract. Sometimes the markings in the paintings suggest ancient alphabets, a reminder that Putterman has made an exhaustive study of the petroglyphs incised into stones in the American southwest. Other elements bring to mind the reductive geometry of modernist painters like Paul Klee or Vasily Kandinsky who searched for the essence of things behind their visible exterior shells.

Many of the works in this exhibition come from a series which Putterman has entitled "Metaphoric Fables". The name summons up the dreamlike territory which these paintings occupy. Like myths, legends and children’s stories, they exist in a realm between fact and fiction, where truth is a matter of emotional conviction and imaginative authenticity.

Eschewing restrictions, Putterman works in a variety of formats and media. Her paintings are often realized over a textured ground composed of medium mixed with sand. This gives the painted surfaces an earthy texture, enhancing their connection to the natural world. She also is an accomplished print maker and creates monotypes filled with luminous colors and darting, quickly dashed off lines.

Putterman’s working method is essentially spontaneous, and the images and forms which emerge from her paintings are rarely, if ever, plotted out in advance. Instead, they unfold as part of the creative process, pulled out of the primordial stew of memory, dream, history and fantasy which comprise the artist’s subconscious world. As a result, their meanings and identities are often as mysterious to the artist as they are to the viewer. Hence, Putterman invites us to plunge with her into this world of glistening color and surging form. These may be creatures of her imagination, but with a little swimming, they quickly become ours as well.

 Eleanor Heartney

*E1eanor Heartney is a contributing editor to Art in America and author of critical Condition: American culture at the crossroads, published by cambridge University Press

Capriccio
Acrylic, sand on wood
46" x 64" 1999

Cave Letters
Acrylic, sand on wood
28"" x 88" 1998
SOLD

Cryptic Tidings
Acrylic, sand on canvas
60" x 54" 1997

Expansive Narrations
Acrylic, sand on wood
28" x 66" 1999
SOLD

Expansive Narrations
Acrylic, sand on wood
16" x 80" 1999

Fish-Mish Mash II
Acrylic, sand on wood
30" x 40"
1997
SOLD

Metaphoric Fables VIII
Acrylic, sand on wood
24" x 36"
1997
SOLD

Metaphoric Fables XIII
Acrylic, sand on wood
30" x 40" 1999
SOLD

Metaphoric Fables XIV
Acrylic, sand on wood
28" x 88" (4 panels) 1999
 

Numinous Legends II
Acrylic, sand on wood
18" x 60" 1999
 

Numinous Legends
Acrylic, sand on wood
22" x 84" (3 panels) 1998
SOLD