Limp and lifeless, a goose hangs from the jowls of a savage giraffe in an upsetting display of carnage portrayed in Clayton Llewellyn’s “Africanized Hunting Giraffe.” Charcoal details the two animals on musty yellow paper.
It is one exotic taste of artistic provocation in a gallery full of work that unites the basics of drawing with modern expression.
Gesture & Mark West Coast Drawing Exhibition, housed in the Southwestern College Art Gallery showcased a plethora of contemporary artists whose work included abstract, portrait and conceptual.
Standing in the middle of the gallery almost felt displacing. No visible cohesion connected the portraits and depictions of people.
A series of paintings by Bob Nelson composed of graphite, white pencil and acrylic depicted young women standing in a mysterious, water-like substance. Their faces were those of Renaissance women, their submerged bodies were skeletons and their persons were shrouded with cloth and bones. Nelson used a stunning combination of greys, pastels and neons to create his creature-women. Oddest and most striking in his work was the juxtaposition between the bashfulness of the Medieval women and the brazenness of their bizarre composition.
Twin portraits by Ted Washington, “Danielle B.” and “Hollis,” provided a weighty gaze to the gallery. Made of precise ink dots, the beautiful black and white faces stared into the gallery, perfectly framed and shadowed. So exact was Washington’s technique, the ink pieces looked more like over-exposed photographs than hand-drawn artwork.
Perhaps the most conspicuous was Kathy Serrano Zanot’s, “Dearest Abyss.” Folded at a right angle, it breached the end of one wall to slide onto the next. Bright yellows, burnt oranges and sharp blacks and whites were poised to catch the viewer’s eye. The substance of the piece, a narrative between a figure standing above the explosive abyss on a cliff’s edge and two companions on the other side, was much more subtle. They are softly drawn in charcoal and almost seem to be overwhelmed by the more potent acrylics. Pen and graphite illustrate an abstract maze of puzzles present in the life of a human. Being lost and alone in the throes of chaos, seeing the summit, striving to overcome.
Cut-and-paste portraits drawn in colored pencil hung alongside milder depictions of travel, time and space. Each had a hand-drawn element, but none shared the same style or voice.
As distinct and unique as their artists, the pieces in the art gallery show that human imagination, creation and expression remain as free and varied as ever.
