Thursday, June 4, 2015

"Elaine Weiner-Reed Faces Deep Loss" - Spring 2015 Art Review, NYC's Gallery&Studio Magazine

Review by Art Critic Anne Rudder in NYC's Gallery & Studio Magazine's Spring Edition 2015: 

The review focuses on a subset of Weiner-Reed's "Memories" painting series.

                                
                                "Primal Scream" - Mixed Media (36 x 24 inches) 
                                                                 © Elaine Weiner-Reed
 

Elaine Weiner-Reed observes:

   "Sometimes I do not even realize that I have donned a mask... That was the case in this instance and I was unmasked in the following art review ... In a good way. 
    I always paint from my gut in an honest expression of my vision and emotions and personal experience. Yet, what this insightful (and intense) review revealed was my darker or deeper emotions contained in many works...in my "Memories" series, specifically, I painted about pain, grief, loss, confusion, denial, and void. 
     An optimistic pragmatist, I always try to focus on the positive or up-side of things, such as hope and life itself as a gift. That message is always what I want a viewer to carry with them after experiencing my work... 
           Before someone moves on, however, I do want them to experience the core, my underlying content and the entire life contained within my paintings."

   So, as you look at my paintings (www.weiner-reed.com "Memories " Gallery Tab), try and connect my story to your own... 
              We are never alone in our pain or our joy. These are universal truths.

   I invite you to remove your own protective mask and read on, feel, and connect... 
Thank you.

                                                  -- Artfully yours,
                                                           Elaine 
             

An excerpt, the introduction of the review follows:

           "Elaine Weiner-Reed Faces Deep Loss." 

 "Elaine Weiner-Reed’s work in the New Century Artists Show, “Memories,” mines human emotion with an abstract expressionist sensibility. Like de Kooning and Grace Hartigan, Weiner-Reed does not eschew the figure in her work and uses black gestural line to great effect. Here, it is one of the primary elements as she strives to break boundaries of emotional limitations.

She allows red and black to predominate in this series, of figurative subject matter, rendered with minimum detail, in a range of hues and strong lines. She, thus, provides an artistic filter that is visceral, chaotic and painful as she tries to cope with and understand transient finality.

This artist has always been a fighter against the status quo. Undaunted by prosaic artistic minds throughout her career, she vigorously has created paintings and sculptures exploring uncharted places.

In this show, her territory is the minefield of human emotions that erupts when there is a profound, personal loss, a rupturing of a seamless thread of existence broken forever, with which one must come to terms. Weiner-Reed accomplishes this here...."

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

EWR and Creative License: Artist Musings: Inside The Mirror, Looking Out



                                 
                                             "Mirror, Mirror" -  © Elaine Weiner-Reed
                                                                    36" x 24" inches; Acrylic


    As I create (painting, sculpture, writing), I often lose track of the fact that everything I make is a part of me, my autobiography. All of it is and will always be/become 'pieces and parts' of the whole: from the inside, OUT. Our truest view in the mirror, if you will...

    I am definitely a work in progress, an evolution of a theme, a packet of potential, a convergence of all that I think, dream, say, create, do, and refrain from doing.

    So, as I keep pushing, discovering, and believing, I need to remember that I am a woman and a mother and a work in progress... I must remember that I can recreate myself and my reflection with another stroke of the brush, another splash of color, another smile, kindness or laugh. 
                         The mirror is in my own control, my own hands.


Musings...

"...So, it occurs to me that we really never can see ourselves as others see us. Mirrors reflect only our flipped/reversed corporeal image back at us...often masked with a smile or ephemeral sentiment. Reality, then, would be a compendium of images in time...collaged with our words, creations, testimonials, memories, and sentiments. Short of that, every photo is but a blink and its reflection. May our autobiography be long, vibrant, and impactful..."

"...Looking in the mirror is an interesting activity...alternatively at times: scary, illuminating, lonely, or peaceful. Sometimes we see ourselves looking back, sometimes a younger or older version of ourselves. It could even be a stranger... At times, we see a novel, a short story or poem...even an off-kilter limerick could fit the moment in time. Mirrors sometimes reflect what we want to see, sometimes quite the opposite. Always, though, it is only a fragmentary and flipped version of ourselves at a moment in time. 
               ...What would our image in the mirror look like 
               if we could see a composite of what the world 
               sees when it looks at us? 
                           Therein lies a mystery."


    For now, then, I shall content myself with my art and writings and hope they became my truest reflection in my life and in the mirror.

                                                - Yours in Art,
                                                         Elaine Weiner-Reed 



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