*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