|
Essay
from Mark Borghi
The
title given to this exhibition Confrontation – The Late
Show – Recent Works says many things about these paintings
and the artist who created them. They are in fact recently
done, all within the last two years. Yet on the other hand,
they could be called late works, as this is an artist who
has been painting for more than sixty years. Then there is
the confrontation, a confrontation of time, for what we see
is the freshness and exuberance of a youthful hand at play
and when we look deeper we unearth an underlying deftness
of touch that only comes with the experience of someone who
has been crafting their skill for many years. So in many ways
it is a contraction, yet one that makes perfect sense.
Design
and color are the two tenets of what makes a work of art express
its existence. Although these principles seem rather basic,
some artists never seem to find the right balance. When we
look at Rothko, it is the color that draws our eye and when
we admire Picasso, it is the design or drawing that attracts
our attention. But here in these recent works by Petersen,
we find a harmonious marriage of design and color. As in all
truly expressive art, the color seems to be driven by the
mood of the artist. What we have are warm blue summer skies,
autumnal yellows and oranges as in the aptly titled Halloween
or the extremely iridescent sunset in Reds, they shift in
front of us like the weather on some distant horizon. The
result is an atmospheric experience and an insight to the
mind that created it. Although initially appearing abstract
if given the time and careful study the shapes become active
participants on the surface of the paper. In the work titled
Confrontation you can see in fact the figure on the right
harassing the figure on the left. The balance and tension
moving back and forth communicates this “all over”
experience to these most recent examples of Abstract Expressionism.
The titles given by the artist likewise belie what their true
intentions are - Nocturne, Day into Night, Summer Solstice
and Let’s Dance – it guides us into the conscious
entity, of these works. In closing we can see that these are
not titles or evocations of memories of things past. They
are the current expressions of an artist who is firmly in
control of their destiny and hers. Petersen is making a forward
looking statement on the last fifty years of art. As mentioned
earlier these might be considered late works but I see them
as the beginning of a new phase in this artist career.
|