The first impression we got upon entering the Marion Art Center on May 24 was all the color pouring out of paintings done by Robert Abele and Mary Moquin, whose works now grace the gallery walls through the month of June.
These works, nearly all of dwellings, cottages and tenements, are given over to the color wheel. The two featured artists use color in different painting styles, but for each color is a main ingredient that speaks to the viewer.
Looking at a tenement painted by Abele caused one to think of a layer cake, heavily frosted and nearly dripping with lusciousness. Abele said that he had been advised by professors to give his work time, that a theme would emerge in its own good time. Did it ever!
The body of work now on display is an open, colorful love story with tenement buildings that take center stage in Abele’s paintings. This artist has masterfully softened edges and employed bright imaginative colors that produce a joyful feeling.
When asked, Abele said that some of the dwelling units are close to true-life depictions, while others have either been a work of imagination or transformed.
We found ourselves on the outside of tenement buildings wanting to look in. The charm of Victorian structures coupled with fanciful colors gives these works depth and beauty, as well as surprise and a desire to see more. In his 2018 thesis, an inquiry into domestic spaces, Abele wrote: “A distillation of time is compounded in my tightly composed, brightly colored and lushly painted domestic interiors.” We thought that perfectly explained exteriors as well.
Moquin’s use of color takes a different approach.
“I use color to set the mood or to accentuate an angle,” she said. “I’m endlessly fascinated by angles.”
Moquin said that her use of color is intentional and that some of her works on exhibit are “slightly” abstracted. What we saw was the use of color and angular images that evoked a range of emotions. While human images were absent, we did not get a sense of loneliness. Instead, we felt we had been invited to attend an event, but we had gotten there early before the hubbub created by noisy humans.
These paintings are restful and powerful at the same time. “I let the shapes tell the story,” she said.
From Moquin’s website, we found her artist’s statement that contained a few sentences that made her artistic point-of-view succinct.
“For several years I have focused on two motifs that serve as my metaphors to explore these questions. One example from nature – the tree, another man made – the house. Both of these endure the hostility of the ever-changing environment. Both serve as shelter. Both are equipped with different methods of coping and both ultimately decay. They bear witness to time’s constant wearing away on any notion of permanence, while I watch.”
Moquin’s structures are angular. Triangle shadows, rectangle roofs, square exterior walls sometimes abstracted by a lack of windows, spaces that have been replaced by color blocks and whose geometry play off each other. And play they do with precision and with color that completes the story.
This exhibit is a master class. It elaborates on a theme, dwellings, and takes the viewer right up to the edge of peaking into an open window. A must-see exhibition.
Marion Art Center
By Marilou Newell