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6th November 2007 NEW EXHIBITION ANNOUNCED DURING ART BASEL MIAMI WEEK:
A full colour catalogue accompanies Safety Zones including essays by DVCAI Board Members Andrea Thompson, Marlon Hill, Esq, Rosamond King, PhD, Maria de Jesus, PhD, Jennifer Smit. A series of oil paintings in response to Disproportionate Concepts of Safety: Reflections of HSBC with Cranes, Marriot Hotel and No. 1 Canada Square, West India Quay the Canary Wharf Financial District of London featuring the Crane as the main component of construction August 2007; juxtaposed with Abandoned Shack on Athol Island, Nassau, Bahamas reputedly used by Bahamian Defense Officers whilst detaining Haitian Migrant Workers for processing, with Discarded Rusted Crane rotting on the same beach, April 2007 In keeping with a preoccupation with transience and fragility in the natural world and increasing reference to worldwide concerns and global warming, Lynn Parotti’s new collection of paintings are a series of contrasts. From the perspective of the sea out of which rises Athol Island in the Bahamas where Haitian sloops capsized, and huge cranes building the London financial empire in Canary Wharf, we see the story of the politics of power. These paintings reflect the artist’s increasingly uneasy preoccupation with the political implications of prosperity, repressive regimes, financial security, and the desolation that can be left behind in its wake when things get difficult as happened both in Haiti over the last two centuries and in London this summer with the near collapse of one of its leading banks. Here the crane is seen as a main component of construction. In these paintings it takes on an almost mythical energy; it has the capacity to build at Canary Wharf, though the tall, thin, almost fragile structure seems to contain and reflect within it the contradictions of its environment in the heart of London’s slippery financial market. Northern Rock a leading UK bank suffered from the ripples of the overstretched American credit crisis and the bank, that rock of solidity, needed to borrow in excess of £30 billion from the Bank of England to honour investments and now Barklays is reporting losses of a similar ilk. In the Canary Wharf paintings there is a vertiginous quality that captures this perfectly as UK house prices slip following the crisis that has hit the home loans market in America. In Rusted Crane, Athol Island, Nassau, Bahamas April 2007 we see the discarded crane rotting on the beach, a toppled giant, desolate, useless, a dictator whose useless presence is still all powerful. STUDIO 43 www.greatwesternstudios.com LLOYD'S LIST REVIEW
Her new paintings demonstrate a deepening appreciation of the sensuous possibilities of oil paint, and a preoccupation with transience and fragility in the natural world, with particular reference to the increasing worldwide concerns about global warming. The luscious green leaves in Evermore pierce through the neighbouring snow covered branches to remind us of the irregularity of our previous winter and heavy snow in contrast to the brevity of our misplaced spring. When the Bough Breaks, taken from the child’s lullaby Rock-a-Bye-Baby, is a reference made to pressure and the very moment when a branch threatens to break under the weight of snow. Ecological strains but also fierce human emotions often echo with an imminent sense of fracture. Lynn Parotti’s need to communicate this fragility of life and the time-sensitive issues of conservation of both people and nature seems almost existential. In Drizzle Marsh, robust speckles of colour and life (vigorous red flowers, patches of blue sky mirrored on the water surface) anchor existence and hope to the painting. The viaduct of Hampstead Ponds, built in 1906, is a familiar historic image set in the romantic heath in London. Its structure and apparent extravagance of purpose though, suggest frivolity and folly, as it has become mysteriously hidden from the regular path and can only be viewed if one approaches from the bushes and brambles. The scene changes drastically with the seasons and times of day. This recalls an ongoing theme in Lynn Parotti’s work: the temporary brilliance of the natural lifecycle. Constructed from layers of translucent oil glazes, the architecture of her painting is intentionally askew and the brushwork of the foliage moves from clumsy to precise. It is this tension that informs her work so much; technically intricate canvases that depict a natural beauty and the presence of people, but scratch the surface and one finds a battle rages beneath where the transience of nature is continually challenged, both by itself and by man. Paintings like Rime-Glade and Phantom Brackenof the Hampstead Heath Series, border on abstraction. Oily paint is poured onto partially dry washes and allowed to bleed into contrasting pigments to produce slick, almost reflective surfaces, which echo the appearance of aerial tidal flows. A nostalgic Romanticism is evoked by these hidden vistas, which refers to early German Expressionism. Lynn Parotti’s work has been exhibited regularly in the US, Italy, the UK and Bahamas, reviewed in The Miami Herald, The Evening Standard, Sky Television, Corriere Della Sera and The Nassau Guardian. This summer she exhibited 30 paintings in Italy; “Faces, Colours and Textures”, La Giovane Pittura Bahamiana, Spazio A-Shed, Lake Como, curated by Roberto Borghi, in conjunction with Sergio Gaddi, Minister of Culture for the Community of Como and Vertex International Consulting, Milan. She was trained at Virginia Commonwealth University, M.F.A. 1993 and at S.U.N.Y. Purchase in New York, B.F.A 1990. In 1992 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Summer Residency in Maine. She has lived in London for the past thirteen years. Her awards include London Arts Board grants, a Skowhegan Fellowship and the President’s Award for the Visual Arts from S.U.N.Y. Purchase. NY. COMO |
