Audio By Carbonatix
Visual artists make for lousy interviews. Not that paint-to-canvas genius needs verbal backup, but some of the most dismal conversations I’ve had were with visual artists trying to explain their work. They stumble over their own ideas. They circumvent the questions. They use plenty of hand gestures to subsidize what isn’t being said despite the outpouring of words. It’s a cruel thing, making an artist talk to a journalist. These artists wouldn’t be making work if they were great verbalists, and I think we should accept that, turn off the tape recorder, and let the work speak for itself. Printed artist statements — those tiresome manifestos written by the artist that accompany most gallery shows — are usually even worse than an interview. Rife with cliché and conceit, they never really explain what the viewer would most want to ask the artist if given the chance.
My editors encourage me to interview my subjects. I mostly refuse, and while some may think I’m presumptuous or antisocial, it’s really that I don’t want to risk disappointment. It’s a hollow endeavor — to enjoy an artist’s work and then let the artist wreck the admiration by coming off as inarticulate or dense. Separating the art from the artist is a struggle, and not always a good idea, and sometimes the less we know about the artist, the more his work can make that universal connection it sets out to.
But sometimes artwork is so heavily informed by an artist’s circumstance that you pretty much have to explore its maker in conversation, or at least do a lot of reading about him. For example, knowing that Van Gogh was poverty-stricken and likely bipolar or schizophrenic helps you look at his canvases with a smarter eye, one that admires the man more for painting through his torment, or because of it. His background helps explain his imagery, his brushwork, his evolution as an artist. Doubtless every art critic today would cut off his own ear for an interview with ol’ VVG, even if it was a horribly difficult conversation, Dutch interpreter notwithstanding.
The art of Robert Peterson, whose work is on display at the Valley House Gallery, needs no verbal explanation from the artist. It’s so straightforward and clear-sighted that a more worldly cynic might suspect it of being ironic or coy, but it’s not. And you know this when you look closely — all those pale eggs and lemons laid out with such approachable charm. Peterson means it, inasmuch as you can mean a lemon.
Lately Peterson, a Valley House veteran based in New Mexico, has taken up the subject of pure foods, and he captures their odd, quiet essence in finger-applied pastel. The effect is pristine without any hint of clinical standoffishness; never before has a row of apples looked so real and so calm at the same time. His backgrounds are softly atmospheric, receding graciously in the presence of the forms they surround. When Peterson makes an eggplant, he makes a big, dark, shiny eggplant with no competition from any other element, and while an eggplant may not sound like the most arresting thing you could lay your eyes on, Peterson’s version is charismatic in a mild, unassuming way.
He’s a master of form, balance, and light play, so it’s no surprise he would veer toward these natural, no-fail shapes and dispense with anything convoluted. The elliptical curves of eggs, the subtle texture of lemon skin, the slight reflection of light off a translucent glass bowl — these elements are generous matter for Peterson to capture on heavy paper. He also takes on the smooth indentations of seashells and bleached bones, and his movement away from his earlier imagery of industrial shapes seems to stem from a need to reduce the heavy outside world to the simplest, most distilled moments. Peppers mingle with squash, pears sit at humble attention. Eggs and mushrooms, tomatoes, and even cabbage take casual center stage for perfectly executed portraits. What keeps these works just this side of decorative is their mood; they say too much in their silence. As the highlighted edge of an egg disappears into a haze of surrounding light, there’s a wistfulness that seeps through — fodder too interesting for a spoon rest.
He lives in Albuquerque, though even if I wanted to do a phone interview with him I couldn’t. Peterson lost his hearing when he was a kid. Here’s the clincher, though: There’s an element in his work that communicates his sonic peace. Perhaps it’s the sense of visual prowess through sensory deprivation; he can’t hear the world around him, but he can see it far better than we can. And what he sees, what he chooses to focus on, is not the harsher details of daily living but rather the small, quiet slices of it. The slivers of experience that seem, on the surface, like background or a means to an end, but then reach unexpectedly deep and resound forever. It’s the stuff that imprints itself on your memories while you’re thinking about something else. You may not remember much about the conversation you were having with your friend in the kitchen last week, but you can precisely recall the texture of the runny egg yolk she dropped into the batter.
And Peterson could one-up you there. He would recall not just the texture, but the exact color and smell of it, the way the light through the window slid over the yolk as it plopped out of its shell.
This confident handling of detail means you don’t have to work to absorb it all. He’s done the work for you and makes it look effortless, taking “serenity” to the delicious extreme. These images glow with quietude; they radiate peaceful acceptance. They’re the visual equivalent of a glass of warm milk, all creamy and soothing. Which is not to say they’re dull — -especially in this hard world, where sometimes all you need is a glass of warm milk just to get you through the next few hours. There’s something nurturing about Peterson’s shapes, no doubt helped along by the fact that it’s, well, food.
While his images are neither complex nor daring, there isn’t a hint of apology about it. Despite my penchant for ballsy conceptual work, I found his show refreshing; so many artists today are compelled by art-world and commercial pressures to up the ante on the “let’s shock our viewers” trend. These days, alongside media rows over such work as featured in the Brit art show Sensation in Brooklyn, most artists won’t risk making truly serene work unless a) they’re older and have been doing it all along; b) they temper the work with some insidious or ironic bent; or c) they know their technical prowess will silence any detractors. Peterson’s foodstuff may fall into the last category, but not in a strident attempt to justify his innocuous subject. He just happens to be very, very good at what he does.
I’ve written before about how odd it can be to walk through Valley House Gallery, given its idyllic setting — the grounds are breathtaking — and its leaning toward beautiful, rather than aberrant conceptual, artwork. It’s something of an oasis, especially when your senses are battered not only by daily living, but also by hard art. Peterson’s show, in this setting, presents a vacation from the shrill, and weary art-hounds would do well to take advantage of it.
And really, it’s nice not to have to know any more about the show than what the works themselves communicate.
