Art Review: Elizabeth Powell at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier
With "Bound in Abstractions" at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, Burlington artist Elizabeth Powell shares a suite of works best described the same way — they are indeed complicated business. Without being coy, explicit or even figurative, they evoke complex and contradictory thoughts about female bodies: how they work, how they're displayed and how they are supported, figuratively and literally.
Aptly for her subject, Powell's medium is easily misperceived. According to Hexum gallerist John Zaso, a number of visitors (this one included) are surprised when they realize these aren't digital images or prints — they're paintings. The works are small, ranging from 7 by 5 to 16 by 12 inches, and all are gouache on paper. Gouache is very matte, fast-drying, thin but opaque paint, and Powell uses it adeptly; her colors are smooth, velvety and consistent. A viewer can detect the artist's hand in the delicate edge of a line but only close-up, in person.
Part of the reason these look digital is Powell's technique of creating dimension with a stepped gradient of evenly shaded lines; instead of a shadow, four or five outlines around a shape — at most an eighth of an inch thick — read from a distance as a curve.
Rules, restrictions and obsessive attention to neatness are traditionally the purview of printmakers, rather than painters; Powell earned her master's in that medium before the pandemic forced her to shift her practice to something she could do at home. She begins her paintings as full graphite drawings, shading included, before applying gouache.
What comes through most in these works, in technique and imagery, is that concept of restriction. The paintings are symmetrical and pattern-based, with intertwining netlike designs, lacing and pearls, in combination with more tumorous, organic forms. Each image is a balance of elements pressing forward and being held back.
Powell began developing this visual lexicon when she was immobilized by endometriosis, an incredibly painful and unfortunately common condition that occurs when uterine tissue grows outside the uterus. Similarly, there's something dangerous in the way bulbous forms sprout and proliferate in these paintings.
In an artist's statement on her website, Powell describes how a quest for utilitarian underwear grew into an obsession with ridiculous lingerie, and specifically "the way the fabric forces women's bodies into geometric shapes, as if they are packaged into a smaller container."
Lingerie comes to the fore in works such as "Suspended Silk," which features pink ribbons looped through rings against a fleshy background. There's a counterpoint here between the relaxed ribbons and a lighter, ghostly pattern of rings linked by rigid lines. The playful delicacy contrasts with an imposing composition.
In "Spinal Column," pink ribbons loop to form vertebrae, which emerge from a field of linked saccharine hearts. The piece offers multiple interpretations of the balance between structure and decoration: Either the spinal column is ineffective in its role or the ribbons are stronger than one might think.
The body is always present in this work but not always overt. In "Neon Haze," a series of globular masses make a very vaginal composition; but the painting's palette, a strange olive-greenish gradation shot through with magenta lines, is its most arresting aspect. Throughout the show, Powell uses near-monochromatic palettes with a single contrasting color. It's especially effective in works such as the muted blue and vibrant orange "Sacrum," which visitors shouldn't miss — it's the only piece hung outside Hexum's main gallery space.
Powell carries the same electric energy into "Cardioversion," a busy mass of pinks and reds edged in bright blue. The repetition of heart-like forms rivals any crushing middle schooler's notebook, but here the hearts bridge the gap between symbol and biology. The painting throbs.
Pearls are an important element, and strings of them in "Bound in Pearls" and "Opulence" are both luxurious and uncomfortable. It's unclear if they're hard like jewelry or soft like cysts; either way, the works remind viewers that pearls are organic and grown to contain something painful.
Powell fits into an established tradition of female artists taking on their own bodies, and viewers may connect her to the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe or Judy Chicago. But this work highlights something else, too — an ambivalence or even distrust of the body as part and parcel of empowerment.
For Powell, structures protect as well as trap. In "Pin Pricks," for instance, bulbous lavender forms coexist with coral-pink bone-like ones. The bones are thinner in the middle, as though they could snap, but they also may be what's holding up the forms around them. In some places, they look like a cage; in others, they impale their surroundings.
At the show's reception, Powell said she had always been interested in psychology and especially in Rorschach tests. Her paintings bear that out, with their confrontational symmetry and role as provocative prompts. They don't ask the viewer to choose between what's decorative or structural, strong or weak, healthy or disordered, painful or pleasurable. Instead, they reward those who look very closely and see each one as a whole.
