Art center features “Works on Wood”

You can carve wood, saw it, build with it, and if you’re one of the three artists featured at the the John Waldron Arts Center, you can paint on it, too.

For the month of September, the Bloomington Area Arts Council is featuring its new ewxhibit, “Works on Wood,” at the Waldron.

The exhibit features paintings from Bloomington residents Bess Lee, Margie Van Auken and Paul Kane.

The goal of the exhibit is to help the BAAC’s mission to increase participation in art throughout Indiana, Gallery Director Rachel Mitchell said.

Originally planned three years ago by Lee and Van Auken, the exhibit came together this month when all three of the artists decided to share their passion for painting on wood.

“This doesn’t always happen with our artists,” Mitchell said. “Often someone entirely different is in each gallery.” 

Kane, featured in the Flashlight Gallery, met Van Auken while browsing her antique shop for sources of wood to paint on. When a slot opened up in the exhibit, he was asked to share his work along with the others.

“It was just really happenstance that Margie and Bess and I came together,” Kane said. “But it was very synchronistic.” 

The artists said the reasons for painting on wood vary.

Kane, for instance, said he prefers the solid response of wood to canvas while Lee said she enjoys the recycling aspect of painting on wood. Many of the works found in the exhibit are painted on objects the artists found lying around, such as cabinet doors, tree chunks and scraps.

“I get wood scraps, wood bits from lumber yards, wood being tossed out on trash days.” Lee said in an e-mail. “I started using some old architectural pieces, like wood molding, old cabinet doors, etc.”

While the artists’ surfaces are the same, their themes aren’t always interconnected.
Religion and iconography seem to be a big theme for Van Auken. Kane, on the other hand, prefers to portray the inner turmoil of his subjects.

“It’s hard to articulate the thematic unity of them,” Kane said. “But they seem to be about how external turmoil reflects internal turmoil, and vice versa.”

The Rosemary P. Miller Gallery, which features Lee and Van Auken, places emphasis on the technique referred to as Retablo painting. Containing earthy colors like red, yellow, orange and brown, Retablo is a New World Hispanic art form inspired by the Spanish Catholic tradition of icon painting, Lee said.

To achieve the technique, a combination of gypsum rock, rabbit skin glue and ox gall are heated and painted onto wood.

“I find the directness of the images to be very engaging,” Lee said. “One wants to look at the subject for longer than just a nanosecond.”