by Maria Porges/ Squarecylinder July, 2017/ Heather Wilcoxon at Jack Fischer Gallery
In Thomas Cole’s painting cycle, The Voyage of Life, the journey from childhood to old age takes place on a boat, its shining form increasingly weather, from the dawn of childhood to the crepuscular dusk of old age.In many of the paintings included in Heather Wilcoxon’s exhibition, Adrift, the elegiac moment of reflection suggested in Cole’s final canvas seems to have just taken place, as night falls. Over and over, with confident strokes, Wilcoxon conjures the skeletal forms of sea-bleached wrecks, seen from below, from the surface of the water itself, or from nearby land or a dock. Wilcoxon has lived on a houseboat for decades; her knowledge of the essential forms of hull and supportive ribs is something almost innate — like the familiarity trainers have of animals, or mothers of children, acquired through touch and proprioception as much as through vision.
The cast of characters that populated Wilcoxon’s earlier paintings has disappeared, and her palette has simplified. Deep blues, blacks and bloody cadmium reds dominate here, allowing the artist’s powerful brushwork to shine. In the two panels of What Was, the largest work in the show, the shadowy, night-dark hues of water and sky seem to almost press down on the ghostly remains of a ship spread across the rectangle’s bottom third. Multiple ladders leaning against its side suggest a massive scale, as if the boat is the size of a whale run aground. But we can’t be sure; there’s no defined distance or depth. As if to remind the viewer that this is imagined scenery rather than plein air observation– if there were any doubts—a deliberately-painted oval stroke of black, like a sign or cartouche, fills the lower right corner.
This oval shape appears again in Election, this time accompanied by an enigmatic wrapped form that suggests a shrouded body prepared for burial at sea. From these clues, it seems reasonable to conclude that the ship appearing over and over in these beautiful, deeply somber paintings is the ship of state referred to in Plato’s Republic. Our ship of state, to be precise: run aground, sinking, or burning, as in Battle, a wonder of a picture that manages to evoke Turner’s vast canvases of sea battles without looking anything like them. The burial at sea could be oft he body politic, or democracy itself. In the end, however, I don’t think it’s the death of hope. These aren’t paintings of despair, but rather the calm observations of a survivor, reflecting on what has happened and describing what might lie ahead. Unlike Cole’s cycle of life, Wilcoxon’s eloquent vision, also on view in a concurrent exhibition at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, suggests that there still may be time — if very little — to find a course forward.
About the Author:
Maria Porges is an artist and writer who lives and works in Oakland. For over two decades, her critical writing has appeared in many publications, including Artforum, Art in America, Sculpture, American Craft, Glass, the New York Times Book Review and many other publications. The author of nearly 100 exhibition catalog essays, she presently serves as an associate professor at California College of the Arts.
SAN FRANCISCO /. ART LTD MAGIZINE/ 2009
“Being Heather Wilcoxon”
at Jack Fischer Gallery
Spike Jonze’s offbeat hit of the 1990s, “Being John Malkovich,” took viewers on a surreal journey through a passageway into the mind of the quirky and gifted actor. Similarly, “Being Heather Wilcoxon,” on recent view at the Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, invited the viewer into the complex and dizzying world of this unique and gifted artist.
The hefty display of works challenged and slightly disoriented the viewer upon entry. Wilcoxon’s drawing, a daily practice inspired by toys, knick-knacks and her fertile imagination, drives the content of the more developed works. Their seductive surfaces quickly draw us into an intimate connection with their bristly content. Skater features a massive, blocky, blue and white striped head, resting in a glowing field of pink, shifting to soft sherbet-orange and mango; As the World Turns imagines the globe as an angry red sphere, sprouting arms and legs in every direction. Eyeballs on long stems roam about the canvas, peering around, while an assortment of feet may be found sheathed in polka-dot spats, or sprouting gnarly, claw-like toenails.
The Little Mean and Nasty Film, an acerbic and memorable animated video, offers quirky characters – such as a three-breasted stripper who gyrates as her disjointed arms wander hither and yon, fondling and probing. Later in the film, protesters wheel by on roller skates while bearing placards reading “save our planet,” “equal rights” and, finally, “fuck war.”
There’s a clear kinship to Guston, also to quirky animation found in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, as well as underground comics. Picasso, with his reinvention of dictator Francisco Franco as a hairy polyp, comes to mind. Artists such as Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn, as well as Guston, were inspired by George Herriman’s 1930s era “Krazy Kat” comics, and Wilcoxon certainly also owes a debt to this edgy work.
Wilcoxon’s world is one where the magnitude of social injustice has rendered protest trivial. Her passion seems often fueled by fury; simultaneously, she can be funny as hell. Her love of painting, and the power of her drawing, are matched by her skill with color and sensitivity of her brush; she’s an artist for whom painting is a commitment of lifestyle rather than a choice of medium. Being Heather Wilcoxon reflects a life of struggle – but one with rich rewards.
– BARBARA MORRIS
Heather Wilcoxon’s work is unafraid to be ‘dark, emotional, stubborn’
https://ostrichmagazine.com/art-design/heatherwilcoxon… 2024, articule
https://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/polsky/heather-wilcoxon6-4-09.asp…..2009, articule
https://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/02/heather-wilcoxon-sausalito-artist-in-boulder/ articule
https://www.silconvallery.com… Triton Museum July 28, 2014/ review
www.sfchronicle.com/ Keenneth Baker 2014/ review at Jack Fischer Gallery
Washington Post, review by Kriston Capps, American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center/ 2011
Artweek, revew by Christine Brenman, Tooomey Tourell Gallery, SF.
In The Make, Video, interview
Inquiring Mind, Cover Image, 2014