Joan Thorne:
What I find refreshing, even exhilarating, about Joan Thorne's paintings is their audacity to be what they are--o speak in a direct, steady voice, both vibrant and clear, and, at the same moment, to register an articulation of color and shape without hesitation, inextricably bound to the surface. Thorne has a certain manner in her work that is both consistent and unimposed. To possess a manner in one's paintings does not mean that her work is mannerist; rather it suggests a unique form of visual intelligence capable of integrating both thought and
feeling--or "knowing/feeling" as Donald Judd once put it in reference to his own work.
This quality is not often accessible in abstract painting today. One has to search for it the way one searches for anything of value. It is not something spelled out in textbooks about painting--and rarely does it make an appearance in art schools and seminars. This is not a superficial assessment. The fact is that some painters--if they are intent on doing it--get better, more proficient, more even-handed, and relaxed. This is not only a matter of technique, but a matter of intuition. It is a matter of conjugating what one knows with how one feels into a synthesis that becomes inseparable. Any significant painting is ultimately about this process.
Having followed the work of Joan Thorne for more than two decades, I have to say that there is something convincing about these paintings. So far as I know, she has never forsaken her desire to be a painter; nor has ever been tempted to transform her work into "installation art." Thorne aspires to make paintings that have a life of their own--to make paintings that encapsulate a particular view of the world and that hold a certain completeness. I find this sensibility most evident in paintings, such as "Cimbra," "Aphrodite," "Oracolo," and "Crete" (all from 2001). By completeness, I am referring to the internal stress generated by the diverse elements in a painting that cohere in such a way as to suggest that there is nothing left to say. The concept of the painting is evoked through the syntax of the visual forms.
Thorne directs our attention not to the forms in themselves, but towards the projection of their content. In each of her paintings, there is a wealth of poetic metaphors filtered through a labyrinth of permeable signs. In "Aphrodite," for example, the deep ultramarine recedes into a deep pool where the blond hair of the goddess becomes a banner of strength floating eternally in the breeze. The crescent shape with its hanging garland and the necklace below in the lower left of the painting lends a counterpoise that undulates through its sheer opticality. Yet the fiction of "Aphrodite"--the dramatic allegory--is contained by the proscenium behind the curtain that hovers on three sides, offering an internal threshold within the literal frame.
In contrast to the frequency of images seen in the public media, painting has the potential to give us an intimacy of expression and a tactile sense about the image virtually inaccessible in the electronic media. Adhering to the position of the tactile image, Thorne's multicolored and richly textured surfaces mixed with eloquent primal forms take us on mythical journey through the Aegean. Her paintings constitute a sustained exegesis on Hellenic light, offering a delicate perception that opens a window on to another world. Many of her symbols are inventions based on visual sensations that are felt in reference to mythic tales, yet poised within her personal realm of experience.
Although abstract in their conception, these paintings refer to places she has been, islands she remembers, the magic of the sea, the sparkling sunlight, signs and symbols from the past brought into the present stratosphere of visual memory. When I view a painting, such as "Delos,"or, for that matter, any of those cited above, I am confronted by the presence--not the absence--of what a painting can be and how it can give us a richness and quality that for some reason much art has deferred over the last decade.
Finally, I should say that these paintings are not about expressionism! Instead, they carry the kind of tenuous formal rigor that one expects from early Matisse, the late Braque, or the Mexican artist Tamayo. Yet she disguises that rigor through intuition. Through the conjugation of knowing and feeling, these paintings beckon us towards a mythical journey of the inner-self. It is here we begin to take flight. I have always believed that flight is one of the most appealing attributes given to the imagination and is often revealed in the better paintings of an era. I find this attribute today in the paintings of Joan Thorne.
Joan Thorne a Retrospective Exhibition at Casa de Bastidas, by Richard Vine Art in America, 1998.
Mythical Journeys, Power and Flight
Robert C. Morgan
Wild Beauty by Stephen Westfall, essay for the catalogue of the Retrospective Exhibition at Museo de Las Americas, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2000
Straight Painting, by Robert C. Morgan, essay for the brochure of group exhibition at the PaintingCenter, New York, 2000
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