Amy Cohen Banker - New Paintings

“Story Told" oil on wood 11x14"

 

"Story Told"

 

We have to live the story that we want told. I have a desire to make an impact. Creative expression imparts that meaning to my life through the legacy of my words and the end product,oil on wood and canvas to be seen and understood by my audience,viewers.

 

The decisions we make define us. This is true in life, in theatre (dialogue) and action) and in visual arts. My life decisions are reproduced and reinterpreted in my art.

 

 The "Story Told" is a lynchpin in the   series for 2015-2017 that will be exhibited at Art Expo, Miami Basel Spectrum, Architectural Digest Home Fair , NYC,  ArtUpClose and for Art Hamptons, Jayson Samuel Gallery. It is a progression until the solo show at Artifact Gallery, May 2017, Orchard Street,New York City.

 

A play is a story told through dialogue and action.Exposition and interior speech can be presented using narrative. Traditionally,the story will be told through dialogue,situations and action. The one person play is a dramatic recitation that employs little action in a monologue.

The narrator delivers exposition. Each of my paintings is like a chapter,reproducing my actions and my inner dialogue conveyed for external art.

I have been inspired by the published printed poems and essays of Louise Gluck, Joan Didion,Robert Pinsky, William Carlos Williams, T.S.Elliott,Emily Dickinson, W.H.Auden,Yeats,

Pierre Revedy, Silvina Ocampo, Max Blagg. Saint du Exupery, Adrienne Rich, Edward Gorey.

 

"Voice" "Voice 2"

 

I read these mentor's work, wrote my story and decided to make my expression through visual art. The paintings will be my voice, my play, taking place from 2000 -2017. This will be solitary but universal.

 

 Lamentation, Elegy

 

I have  synesthesia. I see abstract concepts,such as units of time,sounds, as shapes and color. I see sounds internally in" the mind's eye". These visions go out to my art.

I was inspired by Funeral Drums from Africa , Gambia and Tibetan, Himilayan singing bowls from Nepal.

These celebrate the new year and commemorate occasions such as life and death.

We all are aware of these intense times. I drew a series about this music and now am painting

To mitigate loss,grief,to examine love which started with my "Relicts" poems and 3d

Now my meditation is calm,without anger, about forgiving and moving into present and future.

"Lamentation" is the name of a Tibetan single bowl meditation.

A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry or song form. This grief is most often born of regret or mourning.  

In English literature an elegy is a mournful,melancholic plaintive poem,a lament for the dead.

Every holiday, as well as daily, I think of my dead friends and family. This is probably true for many of us. Think of The meaning of Passover, Easter, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, Memorial Day, etc.  My story can be a universal example as I use the music to inspire me to make my marks with oil sticks,brushes,fingers, in layers of natural pigments that reflect skin,blood,bones,sky,day,night,dawn,scents,natural lights and material spirituality.for all.

 

 

"Vol de Nuit, L'Heur Bleue, Follow Your Bliss"

These three paintings , all oil on canvas, 36x48

Product and escort for the above works.

Particularly inspired by the same feeling of meditation and lamentation.

Antoine de Saint Exupery was a pilot and a writer, so was his wife.

Guerlain named two of their classic scents after his and his wife's life. I could identify with the words and the feelings.

L'Heur Bleu

On the time of early morning before sun rise the shofar is blown for Rosh Hashanna, the hour of detour, reshouva.   The period of twilight each morning and evening when the sun is a significant distance below the horiZon and the residual,indirect sunlight that takes on a predominantly blue hue. This effect is caused by the relative diff usability of short blue wavelengths of lift versus the longer red wavelengths.

 

Vol de Nuit is the name of  Guerlain perfum,title inspired by Antoin du Saint Exupery. Night Flight, in the blue.  The interpretation, theme, is whether doing what is necessary to meet a long term goal is more important than an individual's life. Only through risking many individual lives will a greater good be committed. We don't ask to be eternal. What we ask is not to see acts and objects abruptly lose their meaning. The void surrounds us and yawns on every side.

The book was turned into a movie.,recreated into an opera, emphasizes individual suffering as a response to fascism,

 

These paintings are adjacent to the details of the first smaller group but the mood is similar.

 

 Modules have palettes that reflect the colors of Night Flight, The Blue Hour twilight.

 

My work is multi, interdisciplinary but results of painted series, many layers, organized by monochromatic natural oil pigments that interpret landscapes,still lives, inner and external portraits of transitional,key moments in our lives. Like a palimpsest, a tune, a poem in motion but a still haiku. Each builds up to an autobiography of the universe.

 

- Amy Banker, May 2015