ELLEN PRIEST
Evolution of the Jazz Paintings
If I could only say one thing about my paintings to someone seeing them for the first time, it would be, “Give them time to move.” That’s what grabbed my imagination nearly 30 years ago when I saw Cezanne’s late watercolors and oils at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1977 exhibition, “Cezanne: The Late Works.” I had never seen paintings that moved so magically between two- and three-dimensionality. Then there was the glorious translucence. I felt it was an artistic avenue laid out by Cezanne’s work, and not well explored by his successors. To me, Cezanne’s late paintings were the work of a man who saw the physical world in color densities – not solids and spaces – and all of it was dynamic. From his work, I recognized my own vision over the next several years.
The rough, blunt emotions and compositional athleticism of Abstract Expressionism also grabbed me in those years. I came of age in the Viet Nam era. I had a tough, no-roses view of the world and my place in it – and a big heart. (Not easy to reconcile.) I knew the kind of spaces I was “seeing” intuitively were not real world (realist) spaces. They moved differently. So I began painting gestural abstraction, with Cezanne always in the back of my mind.
Fortunately, the artistic urgencies of my early years have remained compelling and matured with me. My paintings are abstract, made of superimposed layers of paper. Since 1990 my subject matter has been jazz – a musical counterpart to the visual experience I try to create in my work. The jazz that attracts me is full of joy and energy, able to transform sadness. Melodies and chords dissolve and reconfigure, improvisation plays off against carefully composed beats and harmonies.
I base each series of pictures on a single jazz composition. I listen to the music many times, study the score, and take my forms from abstract-expressionist brush studies I paint while the music is playing. My compositional process is one of “choreographing” forms from the brush studies. The resulting paintings embody a translucent, multi-layered space, full of color and light, sometimes open, sometimes dense, depending on the specific musical subject matter. Clear, agile rhythm – itself a moving, breathing structure with “bones” and “sinews” – gives the movement in my paintings its momentum.
In “Jazz: Edward Simon’s ‘Venezuelan Suite’ #1-10” comprising the core of the Berman Museum exhibition, my involvement with the music is new and more immediate. Previously I have worked only from publicly available recordings. With this project, I have been fortunate enough to collaborate directly with Simon over the last 18 months while he composed his “Venezuelan Suite,” premiered it in New York, and developed it in subsequent performances. I’ve had early scores, computer “midi” recordings, lessons and segments of piano-only versions before the suite was performed, total immersion with four performances in two days last March, and a series of informal live recordings.
I chose Simon’s music initially because of its beauty, emotional range, warmth and intellectual rigor, but I had not yet identified a specific composition. When I learned he was writing a suite of pieces based on Venezuelan folk rhythms and song forms, I jumped at the opportunity and gratefully he agreed to work with me. The counterpoint of jazz and traditional music has proven very rich. And the vitality of this jazz composition – itself an evolving, improvisational work – has stretched my own improvisation.
In the “Venezuelan Suite” series collage, color and active white space push forms and movement farther out to meet the viewer. The Suite has changed my palette, necessitating not only a fuller range of color – earth tones are as important as stronger colors – but also a full range of contrast from black to white. I have pushed even harder on two pairs of opposing concepts – reality and illusion, and 3-D and 2-D – in all combinations.
As I intensify the dialogue between imaginary deep space in my paintings and their immediate presence as physical objects, I suggest that both are equally real to me, the movement between them carrying the joy and energy I feel.
© 2007 Ellen Priest
This essay appeared in the exhibition catalog accompanying “ELLEN PRIEST: ‘Jazz Paintings’ on Paper: Improvisations on ‘The Venezuelan Suite’” published by the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, 2007.
If I could only say one thing about my paintings to someone seeing them for the first time, it would be, “Give them time to move.” That’s what grabbed my imagination nearly 30 years ago when I saw Cezanne’s late watercolors and oils at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1977 exhibition, “Cezanne: The Late Works.” I had never seen paintings that moved so magically between two- and three-dimensionality. Then there was the glorious translucence. I felt it was an artistic avenue laid out by Cezanne’s work, and not well explored by his successors. To me, Cezanne’s late paintings were the work of a man who saw the physical world in color densities – not solids and spaces – and all of it was dynamic. From his work, I recognized my own vision over the next several years.
The rough, blunt emotions and compositional athleticism of Abstract Expressionism also grabbed me in those years. I came of age in the Viet Nam era. I had a tough, no-roses view of the world and my place in it – and a big heart. (Not easy to reconcile.) I knew the kind of spaces I was “seeing” intuitively were not real world (realist) spaces. They moved differently. So I began painting gestural abstraction, with Cezanne always in the back of my mind.
Fortunately, the artistic urgencies of my early years have remained compelling and matured with me. My paintings are abstract, made of superimposed layers of paper. Since 1990 my subject matter has been jazz – a musical counterpart to the visual experience I try to create in my work. The jazz that attracts me is full of joy and energy, able to transform sadness. Melodies and chords dissolve and reconfigure, improvisation plays off against carefully composed beats and harmonies.
I base each series of pictures on a single jazz composition. I listen to the music many times, study the score, and take my forms from abstract-expressionist brush studies I paint while the music is playing. My compositional process is one of “choreographing” forms from the brush studies. The resulting paintings embody a translucent, multi-layered space, full of color and light, sometimes open, sometimes dense, depending on the specific musical subject matter. Clear, agile rhythm – itself a moving, breathing structure with “bones” and “sinews” – gives the movement in my paintings its momentum.
In “Jazz: Edward Simon’s ‘Venezuelan Suite’ #1-10” comprising the core of the Berman Museum exhibition, my involvement with the music is new and more immediate. Previously I have worked only from publicly available recordings. With this project, I have been fortunate enough to collaborate directly with Simon over the last 18 months while he composed his “Venezuelan Suite,” premiered it in New York, and developed it in subsequent performances. I’ve had early scores, computer “midi” recordings, lessons and segments of piano-only versions before the suite was performed, total immersion with four performances in two days last March, and a series of informal live recordings.
I chose Simon’s music initially because of its beauty, emotional range, warmth and intellectual rigor, but I had not yet identified a specific composition. When I learned he was writing a suite of pieces based on Venezuelan folk rhythms and song forms, I jumped at the opportunity and gratefully he agreed to work with me. The counterpoint of jazz and traditional music has proven very rich. And the vitality of this jazz composition – itself an evolving, improvisational work – has stretched my own improvisation.
In the “Venezuelan Suite” series collage, color and active white space push forms and movement farther out to meet the viewer. The Suite has changed my palette, necessitating not only a fuller range of color – earth tones are as important as stronger colors – but also a full range of contrast from black to white. I have pushed even harder on two pairs of opposing concepts – reality and illusion, and 3-D and 2-D – in all combinations.
As I intensify the dialogue between imaginary deep space in my paintings and their immediate presence as physical objects, I suggest that both are equally real to me, the movement between them carrying the joy and energy I feel.
© 2007 Ellen Priest
This essay appeared in the exhibition catalog accompanying “ELLEN PRIEST: ‘Jazz Paintings’ on Paper: Improvisations on ‘The Venezuelan Suite’” published by the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, 2007.
