{"id":2049,"date":"2021-12-30T21:09:23","date_gmt":"2021-12-30T21:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dartmagazine.com\/?p=2049"},"modified":"2022-03-15T00:00:22","modified_gmt":"2022-03-15T00:00:22","slug":"encountering-exaltation-the-recent-paintings-of-margaret-evangeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dartmagazine.com\/?p=2049","title":{"rendered":"Encountering Exaltation: The Recent Paintings of Margaret Evangeline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Dominique Nahas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Margaret
Margaret Evangeline, A Certain Dianthus, 2021<\/em>, oil on canvas, 48″ x 48″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the sense of exaltation, the sense of revealment (or un-concealment, as Heidegger would put it) in Margaret Evangeline\u2019s work that always triggers a lot of emotions in me. This calling-forth tone indicates. It doesn\u2019t state or designate. Evangeline\u2019s art rests halfway, poised between a point of revealment leavened with a sense of the untold, the unresolvedness of it all. This tone has an undeniable presence to it that is in itself a manifestation that allows a polyphony of feeling tones to emerge from the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In his text \u201cThe Alchemy of Imagination\u201d Gaston Bachelard refers to \u201c\u2026the law of ambivalence which sets into play the movement of the imagination\u2026[A] matter which does not elicit a psychological ambivalence cannot find its poetic double which allows for endless transpositions. It is necessary\u2026to have a double participation \u2026of desire and fear, \u2026of good and evil, of\u2026 black and white- for the material element to involve the entire soul. \u2026In the realm of imagination there is no value without polyvalence\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This calling-forth aspect of ambivalence is the rapturous aspect of Evangeline\u2019s aesthetic vision. That equivocal vision is sustained in the whorls of painterly activity that suggests the opening and flowering of the camellia-flower that she has used for some time now \u2013 as the MacGuffin, so to speak, that lies at the off-center of her work. That off-centering, with its productive fragrance of mystery is not fixed within a point of conclusion. That involuted point turns in on itself.  So much so that paradoxically, as all great work, Evangeline\u2019s art has a sense of inevitability about it; as if, somehow, it could not be any other way. That \u201cway\u201d, as \u201cpath\u201d (methodos<\/em> is the Greek word), sustains chaos and cosmos equally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Margaret
Margaret Evangeline, Dream Series #1 (B), oil on canvas, 16″ x 20″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To that point Bachelard, in his 1943 text \u201cL\u2019air et les songes \u201c(\u201cAir and Dreams\u201d) writes on poetic expression and its grounding in what he calls \u201c\u2026the immanence of the imagination in the real, the continuous passage from the real to the imaginary.\u201d Bachelard makes remarks that go to the heart of Evangeline\u2019s aesthetic. This inclination is that of trying to fuse differences, of exalting destruction as part of creation, of trying to emerge in a new creative place that is altogether indefinable.  We see and feel these tendencies in her paintings such as \u201cFor LMG, Yellow Rooms Maker Her Cry, Version Two\u201d (2019), and \u201cBlue Reef\u201d (2021). Bachelard writes: \u201c\u2026Imagination is always considered to be the faculty of forming images. But it is rather the faculty of deforming the images<\/em> (my italics) offered by perception, of freeing ourselves from the immediate images; it is especially the faculty of changing images. The value of an image is measured by the extent of its imaginary radiance. Thanks to the imaginary\u2026 the imagination is essentially open, evasive. In the human psyche it is the very experience of openness and newness\u2026\u201d Evangeline\u2019s paintings such as \u201cDisintegrating Camelia with Pink Aura #1\u201d ((2018), \u201cDisintegrating Camelia with Pink Aura #2\u201d, (2018),  and \u201cLanguage 1\u201d (2019),  present us with vestiges of an evasive essence.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Margaret
Margaret Evangeline, Disintegrating Camellia with Pink Aura #1, oil on canvas, 59″ x 75″<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This calling-forth manifestation of newness within Margaret Evangeline\u2019s work is what makes it so seductive. The non-finito<\/em> energies that course through her recent work reinforces these energies. Paintings completed in 2021 such as \u201cA Certain Dianthus\u201d, \u201cRose\u201d, \u201cIrises\u201d, \u201cIris\u201d are good examples of this position of non-conclusiveness. The seemingly unfinished aspect is poignant, reminding us of our mortality. John Berger\u2019s comment in \u201cOnce in A Painting\u201d one of his essays in the 1984 collection entitled \u201cAnd our faces, my heart, brief as photos<\/em>\u201d is apt.  He writes: \u201cWhen is a painting finished? Not when it finally corresponds to something already existing\u2026 but when the foreseen ideal moment of its being looked at is filled, as the painter feels or calculates it to be. The long or short process of painting a picture is the process of constructing such a moment.\u201d  Later in his essay he calls this moment the \u201cpainting\u2019s moment-of-being-looked-at.\u201d Evangeline\u2019s calling-forth energy entices the \u201cpainting\u2019s moment-of -being-looked at.\u201d It is advanced through the pursuit of presence of her<\/em> work and as her<\/em> work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Margaret Evangeline, Greening World #7, 2021, oil on canvas, 48″ x 48″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Jean-Luc Nancy\u2019s \u201cThe Birth to Presence<\/em>\u201d he sets it right. He writes: \u201c\u2026Consider this canonical definition of the imagination: \u201cthe representation of a thing in its absence.\u201d Usually we take it to mean \u201cwhile the thing is absent, is elsewhere.\u201d But what if we were to understand: the presentation of a thing within its absence, going to the heart of this absence, penetrating into, and abandoning itself unto the infinite hollow of presence whence presence comes?  \u201cImage,\u201d here, means rather the emotion of a coming into presence, coming from no presence, going to no presence.\u201d \u2026 Painting presents presence and always, saying nothing, says: here is this thing, and here is its presence, and here is presence, absolute, never general, always singular. Presence which comes, the coming into presence, the coming-and-going, ceaselessly coming and going from its own discreteness to the discreteness of every time that is \u201cproper\u201d to it. \u2026There is no such thing as presence proper, there is only the coming and going of presence\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping this in mind, Margaret Evangeline\u2019s artistic practice, then, can be understood and experienced as her activity of attempting to go to the very heart of this \u201chollow\u201d of presencing. As a result, the sensuousness of her mark-making and form-making is as undeniable as its presencing. Margaret Evangeline\u2019s art is a manifestation of the liminal moment of an encounter with absence.  Through that absence we sense a longing for a thing that is the never-to-be-accounted-for thing. Evangeline\u2019s paintings such as \u201c35,001 Roses\u201d (2010-15) and \u201cHeloise and Abelard\u2019s Last Love Letter\u201d (2018) are tinged with wistful irreconcilability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Margaret
Margaret Evangeline, Greening World #6, 2021, oil on canvas, 48″ x 48″<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another vital aspect of Evangeline\u2019s vision is how impactful it is; the art she makes is apparitional. We see and feel this incantatory measure in her works such as \u201cDream Series #1(a)\u201d and \u201cDream Series #1(b)\u201d (both 2021), and \u201cShift #1\u201d, (2012-2016). Gilles Deleuze, in Difference and Repetition<\/em>, remarks: \u201cSomething in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter<\/em>.\u201d (Deleuze\u2019s italics.) Deleuze points out that an object of recognition is a re-presentation of something already in place. By contrast encountering in itself operates as a rupture in our usual habits, those that serve to confirm our subjectivities. The encountering presence itself offers affirmation of being in the world, of the world, differently, without an a priori<\/em>, as a not-known.  Deleuze\u2019s insights here seem to be echoing his philosophical progenitor Maurice Blanchot. In The Infinite Conversation<\/em>  Blanchot writes : \u201cThis means that to think the unknown is in no way to propose it as \u201cthe not yet known,\u201d the object of a knowledge still to come, any more than it would be to go beyond it as \u201cthe absolutely unknowable,\u201d a subject of pure transcendence, refusing itself to all manner of knowledge and expression\u2026research relates to the unknown as unknown\u2026this relation will not consist in an unveiling. The unknown will not be revealed but indicated<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Margaret
Margaret Evangeline, 2021, The Bare Sea, oil on canvas, 60″ x 48″<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Margaret Evangeline\u2019s excursions into her floral motifs are a fine placeholder for those who cannot help themselves in wanting to identify the recognizable. These shape-shifting floral traces of identification allow Evangeline cover, so to speak, as she enters into her worlds of poetry. The artist\u2019s \u201cRed Resurrection\u201d (2010), \u201cThe Clementine Vulgate\u201d (2019), and \u201cLady Macbeth\u201d (2021), for example, lead us to experience mark-making, forms and colors where cosmos with chaos intertwine.  We sense pursuit of an encounter with presence that is the never-to-be-accounted-for, some-thing un-knowable. Such a brush with presence eludes detection, prevents its very identification as some-thing certifiable. An elision between the seen and the unforeseen, the saying of it and its muteness. All of this is part of the dance that sustains Margaret Evangeline\u2019s aesthetic vision. Convergence and dissolution, chance and change, are key players in her work. A state of grace maintains her work\u2019s force and direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibitions Past and Future: Fleshy Oily Deep and Dense \u2013 Paintings of Margaret<\/em> at Elizabeth Moore Gallery, Hudson NY, May 24, 2021 \u2013 June 26, 2021 and A Light Between Leaves – Recent Work<\/em> by Margaret Evangeline at Erin Cluely Gallery, Dallas TX, August 28 \u2013 October 2, 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dominique Nahas It\u2019s the sense of exaltation, the sense of revealment (or un-concealment, as Heidegger would put it) in Margaret Evangeline\u2019s work that always triggers a lot of emotions in me. This calling-forth tone indicates. It doesn\u2019t state or designate. Evangeline\u2019s art rests halfway, poised between a point of revealment leavened with a sense … <\/p>\n

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