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Dec. 27, 2013
Blissful view of nature
Alice Rabinowitz’s artwork is at the Zack.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Some artists are flashy and flamboyant. Others have quiet, reserved personalities, letting their art do most of their speaking. Alice Rabinowitz belongs to the latter category. Her bright, life-affirming pictures brought memories of summer sunlight into the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, where a solo show of Rabinowitz’s paintings opened on Dec 12.
The show’s title, Fields and Flowers, demonstrates the artist’s predominant theme – the grace of nature. The show includes two distinct series: larger paintings of flowers and smaller landscapes. “I love nature,” Rabinowitz told the Independent. “I often hike, when the weather is decent. All the smaller paintings in this show have been done outdoors, wherever a scene strikes me. It’s a joy to paint outdoors. It takes me a couple of hours to paint a small landscape. They are like wide, watercolor splashes. Then I return to my studio and do the ink lines. I love inking. It’s intuitive. I don’t think, I just do. I let the painting talk to me and, all of a sudden, it comes together.”
Rabinowitz’s mountain and forest landscapes are lyrical and subdued, with thin ink lines depicting grass blades and leaves, separating light from shadows. In contrast, the larger images of flowers are brighter, executed with vivid colors. “I paint them in my studio, from photographs,” she said. “And I have fun with titles. I always try some tongue-in-cheek.”
One of the paintings, the vibrant “Sunny Side Up,” is a blatant example of the artist’s approach to naming. Others, like “Evening Gathering,” are more subtle. In the twilight of the picture, a mixed bouquet of tulips, lilacs and crocuses looks like a group of friends, gathered in the dusk for an intimate chat. In the painting “Golden Globes,” the peach-colored tea roses hang their lovely heads, their intense glow offset by their faint sadness. Despite the abundant color, there is no gaudiness in the artist’s creations, just elegance and sophistication, reflecting Rabinowitz’s inner world and her wealth of experience.
Her road to the arts was not fast or simple. “I painted when I was a child, all through high school,” she recalled. “But then I decided I couldn’t make a living as an artist.” So, she chose something much more practical and went into law. In comparison, however, practising law felt dry and unsatisfying. “I couldn’t paint while I was a lawyer,” she said. “Both occupations require focus and time. I can’t paint for 15 minutes here and there. And I didn’t want to get old without doing what I liked best. I really wanted to be an artist.”
About 20 years ago, Rabinowitz finally paid heed to her inner voice. She started taking art classes, quit law and became a full-time artist. She tried her hand at various art forms until she found her calling. “I’ve done some figures and still life before, but these two – landscapes and flowers – fit me better. I seem to see everything either from a far distance or very up-close. There’s no middle ground for me.”
She said that her pieces often start with her wandering in the mountains, beaches or gardens. “When I find a subject that resonates with me, I settle down in solitude to spend a blissful time capturing the feeling of the place on paper. I explore the interplay of color and light, and am particularly drawn to the transparency of objects in the natural environment…. A painting is like a puzzle for me; I try to figure it out as I go along.”
The harmony and peace in her paintings draw viewers closer, inviting them to enter the images, to share the artist’s serenity and her penchant for beauty. Surprisingly, her main agency is watercolor, an unforgiving medium. Unlike oil paint, watercolor demands that the artist doesn’t make mistakes; otherwise, she has to start over. “You can’t cover it up and paint on top in watercolor as you can in oils,” Rabinowitz explained. But she has never shied from a challenge. Instead, she seems to thrive when faced with a hurdle.
One of the world’s most famous amateur artists, Winston Churchill, serves as an inspiration for her. “He wrote a book, Painting as a Pastime, where he describes his experience with painting. Like me, he started painting in middle-age. It’s a short book, and I only discovered it recently, but I love it. Churchill said in the book, ‘I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.’ That’s how I feel about colors too. I’m sorry about the browns.”
There are no browns in Rabinowitz’s paintings, and she dreams of new flowers and new scenery she wants to discover. “I could never stop painting,” she said. “I feel so much happier when I paint. Getting this show ready was really frustrating for me: it cut into my painting time. There was so much to do. Now, it’s done, I can start painting again.”
Fields and Flowers is at the Zack Gallery until Jan. 12.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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