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Bennington Banner Article
Published Thursday,
April 7, 2005
Page 1B-2B
Now
for something completely different
Escaping from
New York,
a Sandgate artists blends creative imagination with vivid imagery in
pursuit of success
Andrew
McKeever,
Arts Editor
SANDGATE
The
ripples caused by 9/11 continue to roil the surface of the pond,
regardless of whether it’s turbulence in the Middle East or an artist
who found his place on a hillside in a remote part of Bennington County.
You drive over
several miles of dirt road showing early warning signs of the
approaching mud season to reach the driveway leading to the home and
studio of Lee Arrington in West Sandgate. Then a muddy track
across an open field gets you the rest of the way.
It’s all very
Vermont, and about as different from his former life in the fast lane as
it’s possible to imagine.
Arrington, 35, a New
York City native educated at the city’s elite high school of music and
art, left a successful career at a law firm and a Manhattan penthouse
and moved with his wife Nicole, a writer, to the upper reaches of
Sandgate, there to focus on what had been a dream and an avocation since
childhood – making art.
An assortment of
stringed instruments ranging from an Indian sitar to an electric guitar
testify to an interest in music that had him on the road with a rock
band in years past. In the corners of his studio stand sculptures
and ceramic pieces. But it is his oil paintings of striking and
unusual imagery that commands attention, and are the subject of a solo
show of his work that will be opening this weekend at the Southern
Vermont Arts Center in Manchester.
“Intuition Welcome”
is the title of the show, which will feature 15 of Arrington’s newer
works from four recent themes. The title expresses his interest in
the link between the unconscious of a viewer and the outside world, he
said.
“All of my canvasses
start off in a very weird way and I’ll start off in an intuitive
fashion,” he said. “Emotion is always the most important thing –
technique can be learned – but the idea has always been what can I do
that maybe someone else can’t?”
Imagination, he
said, is more important than knowledge.
What he does is
create large canvases, not all of them basic rectangles, with arresting
color contrasts between a dominant feature and a whirlwind of
subordinate elements that pull the viewer in even as they are cloaked
with symbols and metaphors of related events to the main idea.
“It’s more than the
canvas and the paint at the end of the day you should feel something
from it and if you don’t then I guess I’ve failed, but that’s why I try
to separate my audience into those that have intuition – if you don’t,
well, you’re find of like, ‘well, I don’t see it,’ but if you
trust yourself enough to say I don’t know what it is but I really like
it then that’s the kind of people that like what I do” he said.
It may be that
Arrington’s art is not for everybody. It is bold and dynamic, yet
full of subtle meanings that can keep a viewer busy a long time picking
them out from the powerful sweep of the images. That’s a task made
more complex, but hopefully more interesting and rewarding at the end,
by the details inspired from personal experiences.
In his large canvas
titled “Step,” a large blue eagle dominates the center of the image.
It represents his own personal journey out of New York and the risks
that involved, he said.
Originally the
painting started out with the person holding a flag leading an army
marching to war. The person was him, leading the good fight to
make real, authentic art, but then the direction shifted, he said.
The eagle represents
the action that is necessary to translate opportunities into
actualities, he said.
“The idea was that I
have so many friends who are waiting for the big thing in their lives to
happen and my philosophy is that you may have opportunities but you
still require action and you need to step into that role and take a
risk,” he said.
Taking a risk was
much on his mind when in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 he and his wife
flew back to New York from Istanbul, Turkey, over the still-smoking
ruins of the World Trade Center where his wife had worked. Despite
the material success they had both earned and enjoyed, there was a
missing piece in the fabric. They interpreted the attack on the
twin towers as something of a sign. So they went hunting for
someplace new, he said.
“We made a wrong
turn and ended up in Vermont so we moved here” he said. “We were
willing to move into this new opportunity and part of that is
threatening to other people.”
That threat is
symbolized a cross to the right of the eagle and the abstract face
nearby. “People can hold you down if you let them,” he said.
The contrast to the
paintings he was making in New York and the ones he paints now is
startling – almost as startling as the wild mélange of imagery he
conjures up in one of the works that will be part of his new show.
An oblong picture of
what looks like a sideways view of the skeletal structure of a
prehistoric amphibian against a flat black background is illustrative of
the style he used to work in. Heavy on the black, almost
industrial looking, the pictures attempted a level of realism and
accuracy that seem to have vanished from his newer work. Riotous
color and reaching for feeling have replaced the photographic detail of
that earlier body of work, he said.
In “Raphael,” he
used as a jumping off point a famous painting, titled “School of Athens”
by the Italian Renaissance artist of the same name. But the
precise detailing of the original image by Raphael has been transposed
by Arrington into one that blurs out the detail and eliminates the
religious and military figures while preserving the grandeur of the
feeling, he said.
It creates a wholly
new work, which also hearkens back and pays homage to one of the primary
sources of Arrington’s inspiration; the masters of the Renaissance.
One of the series within his show is devoted to that. Along with
Raphael, DaVinci and Michelangelo are his among his most important
influences, he said.
“I know my work
looks nothing like theirs but those are the major guys,” he said.
Arrington works in a
style he calls “symbolic abstract expressionism,” a unique category he
developed as a way to describe his style.
Abstract
expressionism developed in the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II,
driven in large part by the European artists who fled the conflict that
raged across the continent from 1939-1945. By the 1950s, their
influence inspired the emergence this new school of American art, which
wrested supremacy over war-shattered Europe.
Abstract
expressionists valued individuality and spontaneous improvisation.
They shared a similarity of outlook rather than style, one that was,
characterized by a spirit of revolt and freedom of expression, according
to the art Web site ibiblio.com.
The symbolic part
refers to the use of icons and archetypes and near-hidden messages
contained within his paintings, most of which grow out of his struggles
and perceptions of having to overcome obstacles to get to where he is
now. That in turn, is a new platform for more struggle, if one
that finds him in an environment where his life can be more in balance,
he said.
But if pulling up
stakes and relocating to a new world is only a part of the scheme.
There have been no shortage of other starry-eyed idealists, some of them
even with talent – who have made similar moves over the decades.
What differentiates
Arrington from many of them is a willingness to go the extra step to
market his work, sending out the postcards and bringing his work to the
attention of the Southern Vermont Arts Center to get a solo show after
only two years. He has already been part of a group show there, he
said.
The arts center
prides itself on showing an eclectic mix of shows representing several
different schools of art, and Arrington’s work fit the bill for a modern
viewpoint, said Rob Ives, the exhibition coordinator and art sales
representative at the center. He was a member of the selection
committee who reviewed Arrington’s work, he said.
“Lee’s work is a
little more abstract, a little more contemporary that what we normally
show, so it meshed perfectly,” he said. Shows rotate about every
month and display the work of about seven-to-nine artists; most, though
not all of them, are members of the arts center, he said.
Typically, Arrington
works on about 20 canvases at any one particular time, finishing about
60 over the course of a typical year, he said.
That’s a little
slower than a typical New York minute, but while he his work may look
spontaneous and the product of a wild dash to the finish line, that is
not the case. Too much thought goes into the pieces for that, he
said.
This is different,
powerful and bracing work, and the voice of a young artist with a great
deal to say.
The opening reception
for Arrington’s show will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 9 at
Gallery V in the Yester House at the Southern Vermont Arts Center.
The show will run
until April 27. For more information, call the arts center at
802-362-1405. |
