Painting as Anti-Suicide Gear
At the end of 2006, I visited Barbara Wijnveld’s
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Wijnveld graduated from De Ateliers seven years ago; seven years in which she
has not exactly been sitting around twiddling her thumbs. She has, in fact, held
several exhibitions since that time. A few recent highlights include the
Koninklijk Prijs voor de Schilderkunst
(Royal Award for the Painting Arts) which she received personally from Her Royal
Majesty Queen Beatrix in 2004 for her large portraits. According to the jury
those portraits constitute ‘an ode to the possibilities of the painting arts’.
She was also nominated for the Prix de
Rome 2005, where she featured in the long list with nine other painters.
Finally, she also presented a number of solo exhibitions at art markets, such as
Art Rotterdam and Art Amsterdam for the Wagemans gallery. All in all, more than
reason enough for an encounter with Wijnveld’s art.
In her studio, Barbara shows me some of her older and more recent works, as well
as a canvass with the cryptic title, Anti
Suicide Gear. The latter work consists of a large white canvas with a
colourful, monstrous face: a face with four eyes that stare out in different
directions, four sets of eyebrows on a shared forehead, two mouths and so on.
That not withstanding, it is not really a frightening or unpleasant image to
behold. The forms are all recognizably human: two portraits of women that are
composited, layer upon layer, into a single composition on the canvas. It is
unclear where the one ends and where exactly the other starts. It is a jumble of
forms, lines, drip marks and splashes of colour on a shining, transparent
lacquer base. Although this description might possibly evoke images of a spoilt
and messy canvas, it most certainly is not. It is simply a case of the painted
elements being used such that, together, they are almost miraculously
transformed into a perfectly balanced composition. And the balance is not
exactly ‘nice and comfortable’ either; it is probably better described as
suspenseful and exciting. The overall effect of that canvas is in fact rather
inspiring!
Upon closer scrutiny, it becomes evident that the composition was effectively
rendered in pencil; not unlike a line drawing for a colouring picture. The lines
are not drawn in complete detail and nor are they filled in: they certainly do
not form a ‘bound unit’ in any proper sense of the word. The lines simply form
the guidelines within which the colour blocks are built up: layer upon layer,
colour upon colour, plane upon plane – always overlapping. The ultimate effect
is anything but rigid: The composition is not equally elaborated in each of the
various different zones on the canvas; in fact, some sections are simply posited
and left there for what they are - pencilled lines. Other sections in the
composition are almost abstract: a single plane or a single line; while other
areas are more figurative, highly elaborated and finished with lacquer coating.
The studies to her canvasses consist of bold, overlapping figures rendered on
sheets of white paper with black paint, markers and ink. The sources of her
compositions are photographs that she takes of objects and of herself and that
she combines with images of famous stars from magazines. It’s all very
experimental: the drawings grow out of a dance of lines that ultimately yield
either recognizable forms or, in some cases, result in pure chaos. She uses
almost no colour in these drawings; instead she cuts the sheets up and sprinkles
them with glitter or she covers them with layers of mother of pearl. It is
almost as if she only elaborates in colour those compositions on the canvas in
which the tension that is generated in the lines and in the borderlines between
recognizability and chaos are balanced.
Her work method is clearly manifested in the layering of the compositions: One
is almost inclined to mentally ‘peal’ the layers off one after another and to
analyze them one by one. Her use of colour is another typical aspect of her
work: She paints with a pallet of primary acrylic colours, and blacks and whites
that she dilutes with water. Instead of mixing the colours on her pallet, she
mixes them on the canvas; not literally, of course, but by layering the colours
one after another. While, historically, painters have used undercoats in
complementary or contrasting colours to enhance the effect in the subject
matter, Wijnveld’s layering more closely resembles the use of colour commonly
found in the graphic arts. In the same way as printing techniques work with
several printed layers – black, white, cyan, magenta and yellow – all of her
canvases are built up in several layers of paint. The application of colour
after colour of almost luminous intensity yields exactly the same result as the
traditional art of painting.
One thing, above all, is blindingly evident from her canvases: her absolute
control. Her approach to her canvas is highly effective and leaves very little
room for coincidence. Her typical system of layered, transparent colour surfaces
absolutely does not permit the use of overpainting techniques. In other words,
she knows exactly how her paints work, precisely how the drop of paint will
‘run’, where it will stop or flow into another colour surface, and exactly how
this will be affected by the application of yet another layer. In principle, her
technique allows her to add an ‘infinite’ number of layers. The sheer control of
her medium is evident from the fact that, at a certain point, the painting is
simply, almost miraculously, complete. It’s impossible to look at the painting
and come to any other conclusion than that the portraits, rendered, as they are,
layer upon layer, are not done, finished:
ding-an-sich.
Looking at the most recent work - line drawings of bodies that are completely
overrun with ‘drips’
of colour running directly from top to bottom - and looking back at the older
works of recent years, it is quite clear that Barbara Wijnveld is building her
oeuvre in a very consistent manner.
The fascination with the process is always there, but the emphasis is always on
another painting element with which she is experimenting, and which she is
elaborating and always digging deeper into. She pursues that process almost
relentlessly until she controls it to perfection and is able to apply it as one
of the elements in a subsequent process. Initially, the emphasis of her work was
on the line drawings, on contours and duplications - an almost graphic process.
At a later stage, she began to experiment with the effects of colours and
layers; which, in turn, led to rich, heavily coloured canvases. The next step
was to bring the different elements together; a process that resulted in lighter
canvases in which the prevalent themes are embellished with decorative elements.
The latest works appear to be a consolidation of all those elements in
compositions that are almost stripped down in ‘fullness’ and that are in search
of an ‘essence’. It all amounts to an almost overwhelming sense of lightness and
spaciousness.
In the jury report for the Koninklijke
Prijs voor Vrije Schilderkunst 2004, the jury praised the way in which
Wijnveld ‘plays’ the art of painting; almost as a musician plays his instrument:
“The ‘sounds’ she evokes in her paintings are harmonized into an ode to the
power of the medium.” And, indeed, she truly does ‘play’ with full abandon; she
reaches out, pushes the limits of the known and unknown and is, above all, never
afraid to experiment. One thing is abundantly evident from a viewing of her
work: painting, the process as such, is of principal importance.
The unambiguous choice of figuration, especially the choice of the self-portrait
and, to a lesser extent, the still life (in the past she also painted cars,
chairs and plastic piggy banks) constitutes meaning in itself. After all, given
the game she is playing with her medium, she could just as well have opted for,
and limited herself to, pure abstraction. But Wijnveld paints portraits, and
inherent in that genre is the fascination that the artist feels for, or the
relationship that the artist has with the subject matter as such. And,
ultimately, the self-portrait is, in effect, a form of reflection upon the self.
As in the case of her painting, Anti
Suicide Gear, many of Wijnveld’s paintings depict a woman with green,
catlike eyes and a shock of red hair. Those are portraits of the artist herself.
The portraits rarely stand on their own; in most instances they are ‘integrated’
into an object or a second portrait of celebrities, such as Madonna, Barbie,
Barbarella and Janis Joplin. Not that she identifies with those personae; this
has more of the nature of a confrontation. And the underlying rationale is
different every time; they might harbour wishes, moods, relationships, needs or
memories that are either triggered by those representations or might even
illustrate them. This approach allows Wijnveld to scrutinize herself from a
different angle in every new painting. She also uses the cryptic English titles
to enhance the references; for example,
Horse (Merry Me) could refer to a merry, drug-induced disposition, but could
equally well refer to a plea (spoken out aloud): 'Marry me'.
Me Jane (Barbarella),
on the other hand, uses a word play to evoke an association between the actress,
Jane Fonda, who plays a submissive and desirable creature in the classic SciFi
film, and the famous line from the Tarzan series.
Wijnveld is convinced that the ego is not a fixed phenomenon; instead, it is
built up of different traits, talents, and so on, and that, in the
confrontations between different egos – in events or in relationships with other
people or objects – the relationships between the building blocks of the ego are
constantly manifested in shifting shapes and forms. There is not only one ‘I’;
there are literally hundreds. And, as the relationships and manifestations of
the ‘I’ are constantly shifting, so does Wijnveld build her images on her
canvases with the artistic building blocks she derives from her pallet. In fact,
for Wijnveld, the process of painting has evolved into a process of self
reflection; which explains why she has chosen to restrict herself to painting
her own portrait.
The canvas is the platform she uses to confront herself on time after time. And
it demands true courage every time; because, after all, it cannot possibly be
easy to face your demons day after day. In Wijnveld’s case the exorcism of her
anguish is not a game; it’s a matter of survival. It constitutes her own
personal anti-suicide gear.
Wendel ten Arve
2 March 2007
Wendel ten Arve is an art historian and curator.