TRACING THE THOUGHT BEHIND THE TECHNIQUE

5:00AM Thursday April 10, 2008 By T.J. McNamara

An artist's work can be brilliant in one way, flawed in another. Emotion, thought and technique make art. Virtuoso technique can be impressive in itself, yet not make a complete work.

This week there are three shows that are technically excellent but, in some measure, do not achieve the balance of the three elements. In the work of Anita De Soto, at Oedipus Rex Gallery until April 19, the drawing is immaculate and the representational element of the painting is completely convincing.

The exhibition is called Pie in the Sky and gives its title to one of the works. There are references at the top to several martyred women saints. Eyes on a stalk is the iconography for St Lucy. A floating scarf, a twirl of pearls and a breast on a plate is the attribute of St Agatha who had her bosom hacked off by an executioner. Then there is a breast-shaped glass bowl, some rocks, more pearls, a flourish of drapery, a hand pointing down to a transparent sphere balanced on the head of a moody dog lost in the gloom of the lower part of the painting.

The draughtsmanship is flawless but what is the thought behind it? Does the dog aspire to sainthood? Is the desire for martyrdom a black dog that haunts our mind? There is an emotional surge in the rising force of the painting and yet the ideas are oddly yoked together, puzzling without being truly mysterious.

Much more convincing are the male and female figures of Holy Smoke. Here the smooth, young muscular bodies do not have the little irregularities of realism but are idealised representations of the human body. We feel the pangs of love as the woman clutches a wound in her side and the man has his palm pierced with a stem of a rose.

This power does not extend to the little paintings of naked children. These have a certain charm and range from Limbo which shows the spirit of a dead, unbaptised child flying free, to the coy naughtiness of a picture of a piddling child called Holy Water. Here the technique does not support an idea of any force. The power returns in a smaller painting called The Allegory of Error where, in the glass case of memory, a severed head of someone who strayed is held by the lilac glove of romance in a reversal of the Salome situation.

It all adds to a striking exhibition.

back to Anita De Soto page