"... And what helps me write is that one of your paintings is right next to me, the very closest. The street and the trees, and a greenness that I love. Your art inspires imagination.
I have another painting of yours in the bedroom. Fishing Up at the Lake, that magical canoe painting. I stare at it passionately every day. Ongoing inspiration. Even when I am away, it stays in my mind."
from Christopher Irion, artist, Vermont, 2022
Frankie Gardiner Cucumbers and a Zucchini, oil on canvas, 20”x16”
I love this painting. It doesn’t look quite like I remember it, although we were inside, in Frankie’s house surrounded by trees, a bit dark. And I remember it not being particularly well lit.
When you stand across the room from it, or seated as we were, you are looking at a table top that is in fact almost vertical to the viewer and beyond that, A chair and a window looking on to a lawn or meadow.
At first glance it seems simple, perhaps even too crude. But as you rest your eyes, as I rested my eyes, I started to realize that it was rather astonishingly sophisticated. Every single tone was in place. And through the window, the value relationships bring to mind those of Corot, Who takes you so by surprise. Not the subject matter, but how the relationship of every plane and their correct Values create a perfect luminosity. And looking out that window, with it seemingly dashed brushwork, We see that every tone is in place, And it creates a pictorial space as vivid and realistic as any perspectival representation. Then one has to stand back a bit to have it resolved itself. And then the echoes of Soutine, Roualt, Milton Avery, even de Kooning. It’s such a perfect painting to me. Not a mark out of place and with an irrefutable internal logic.
Thank you, Frankie, for allowing a Facebook artist friend into your studio to talk about painting and look at your wonderful work.
