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Nancy King Mertz
Palette & Chisel Academy
Poet William Carlos Williams had a point. The "strange hours" of travel often eliminate the distractions of mundane activity: our senses focus on what surrounds and sustains us. For much of life, we frequent habitual locales and pass through with mere acceptance -- everything is just there, in its place, complacent; rarely to be viewed with uncommon attention... or deeply experienced. For the traveler, strange hours and new environs heighten awareness, a profound openness to sensation and contemplation. One of the many powers of art is to create "strange hours" at will -- to single out, empathize with, and to interpret anew. The art of Nancy King Mertz now on exhibit at Chicago's Palette and Chisel Academy does precisely that. Her art is honest, straight-forward Impressionism. It captures light, and solid form in light -- the effects of how we see, as well as what we see. And William Carlos Williams's poem provides another key to the current exhibit at the Palette and Chisel Academy: This exhibit, "Europe Revisited: Images of France, Austria and the Czech Republic," offers "the beauties of travel." In it, Nancy King Mertz presents over 95 oils, oil pastels, dry pastels, watercolors, pen & ink renderings and colorprints. "Europe Revisited..." is both an entire gallery of Impressionist art, and a mid-European Grand Tour.
Twelve of the paintings present moments and the monuments of Bohemia's ancient capital, Prague. Charles Bridge, Prague (1999: Oil on canvas) is a fine example of Mertz's meditative sense for fleeting light. The Charles Bridge was completed in the late 1380s; in subsequent years the sculpted forms of thirty saints were added along its 1,970-foot length. It is an enduring landmark of Old Prague -- the city's New Town wasn't fully under way until the 15th century. Mertz's choice of the Charles Bridge, an icon of endurance, and her Impressionist concern with the ever-repeating, but always ephemeral luminosities of the hour and the season give the painting a transcendent mood. Although it is a secular image, it offers quietude and at the same time a declaration of timelessness one normally expects in religious art. Mertz achieves much the same mood in her oil pastels, as Sunset on the Seine, Paris (1999) attests. Art critic Martin Gayford, in "The Impossible Subject," an informative review of several Claude Monet exhibits, quoted the French 19th-century Impressionist as declaring: "For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life, the air and the light, which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere that gives subjects their true value." (In Modern Painters, Vol.11, No.4: Winter 1998) Nancy King Mertz's art at the Palette and Chisel Academy proves that the Impressionist techniques and discoveries remain creative and continue to engage lively aesthetic concerns. Hers is an art devoted to capturing appearances.
Monet, to single out but one Impressionist voice, often spoke of the enveloppe, the atmosphere between his ostensible subject and himself. Martin Gayford analyzed Monet's approaches and solutions, but the enveloppe is much like Williams's "strange hours." Between sight and actuality, the human intervenes. Only humans experience reverie and revelation through sight. The artist is an interpreter and arbitrator who selects, whether consciously or intuitively. Nancy King Mertz favors a soft edge and a soft focus in much of her work. But it is human mood and response which motivate her art, whether implicitly -- the artist is the viewer's eye and mood, as in the above paintings; or explicitly -- by the manner of presenting people in a chosen moment or setting. A wistful example of this latter approach is Shadow Dancer, Palace of the Popes, Avignon, France (199: Oil on linen: 36"x48"). It is one of what Williams called the "beauties of travel." Without the artist to give it attention, it could well be any of myriad unrecorded moments within centuries. But here, it is a child who discovers what the artist struggled to re-discover: shadow and light, shade and delight. Zen Buddhism, and some Modernist painters, have remarked upon how much adults must unlearn in order to truly see. And it has been a recurring theme of psychologists and art historians such as Ernst Gombrich. Nancy King Mertz directly reveals her own fresh insight. This is a fine art.
In some pieces, such as the pastel, Musee d'Orsay [France] (1999), the image is even softer and less focused. The pastel conveys an impression of looking back into time, or seeing forward, in a vision. The visual image openly displays its enveloppe, its "strange hours." And it, like much of the architecture and common knowledge of Europe, bears a consciousness of history that is inescapable: it resonates with overtones of Francois Villon, Bistro life and Moulin Rouge -- it is 1999. In so many works, there must be and there is a wide range of content and color scheme, but the artist's style and expression is consistent. And although it is difficult to define, the sense of composition and framing of the image clearly mark the the paintings as works by Nancy King Metz. She has an individual expression. In addition to the works of the show's three-page checklist, a number of the artist's prints and several reproductions are also available. House of Degas I and House of Degas II are representative. Both are signed, numbered colorprints on rag, measuring 18 by 24 inches and were completed this year. They originate with the artist's series of over twenty-one oils, pastels, watercolors and ink renderings which depict images of New Orleans, Louisiana. In these, the foreground constitutes a darker contrast with the farther grounds, and small statuettes, human forms stilled in bronze or porcelain, animate the visual field. Their darker tone adds a poignancy to the bright background, and they might almost be surrogates for a human viewer, recalling such as the child of Shadow Dance. There are a large number of current paintings on display in "Europe Revisited" and their content ranges from venerable landmarks, to common European street scenes, right through to close still lifes -- an array of hats in a Parisian shop or the eight carved faces from a Prague building. The exhibition is a feast of contemporary Impressionism. One, however, remains aware that among some of the academic establishment and the PR slingers of the old avaunt-'gourd, the idea of contemporary Impressionism, or even content, elicits piquish cries of pain (and the concept of 'beauty' drives them back into the lab). But evolutionist, Stephen J. Gould noted that humans, like all primates, are overwhelmingly informed of the world by sight; and in the visual arts, "One picture is worth a thousand words." "Europe Revisited" is a visual display -- art. When Cezanne said of Monet that he was "only an eye, but my God what an eye," he might well have added: "a world, but my God what a world." After all, human art took until the European Renaissance just to discover rules of perspective, no easy matter. The purely visual, in itself, is profound. Furthermore, as long as humans remain human -- and art is an activity that nourishes humanness -- form, content and context will have their place in art. Nor should art change fashions as if it were ladies' shoes or an eatery. (Who ceases to enjoy French cuisine because sushi is 'in'?) The estimable artwork of Nancy King Mertz resides in the art collections of Amoco Oil, American Airlines and collections throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan. Nancy King Mertz's art is Impressionism. It is fine Impressionism, and a pleasure. It will be on exhibition at the Palette and Chisel Academy until November 14, 1999, and one may phone 773-477-8990 for details. Mertz's work may also be viewed at Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery, 704 North Wells, Chicago 60610, Telephone: 312-664-3406. In addition, she exhibits her paintings at her own Artful Framer Studios, 2861 N.Burling, Chicago, Il. 60657, Telephone: 773-477-8990. --G. Jurek Polanski Jurek Polanski has previously written and art edited for Strong Coffee in Chicago. He's also well known and respected among the Chicago museums and galleries. Jurek is currently a Visual Arts Correspondent for ArtScope.net. |
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