until now, secretly coveted a painting by her husband
Paul Rahilly. His large, complex scenes with figures
are stunning and several are in the exhibition. It is a
small painting, Still Life with Bread and Water, 1993,
that caused me to break one of the commandments.
The crusty, flour-covered bread begs to be split open,
not sliced, to reveal the soft, warm, aromatic center.
For me, Rahilly’s loaves of bread not only evoke
“breadness” but they are made with a thick, luscious
impasto of paint.
His paintings, such as The Violinist, 1980, are often
full of unexplainable “stuff,” perhaps relating to the
figure, but perhaps more for the fun of arranging them
and painting them.
As Katherine French writes in her essay for the
catalog, “Rahilly is in love with the tactility of material.
Well-painted objects do not interpret the world, but
rather allow us to see it through an aesthetic lens that
Rahilly holds up.”
Monafo revels in the arrangement of objects in her
still lifes. She once dumped a pile of silver items on
the floor and resolved to paint them. But she couldn’t
resist the urge to do a little rearranging and then
painted the grouping from several directions. One
of them, Silver Cluster (North View), is in the von
Metzsch collection. Open Heart, 1994, is a careful
arrangement of white objects, some with blue rims.
Known for her vibrant color, she has composed here asymphony in the key of white.
Gail and Ernst von Metszch are not wedded to a
particular period of their artists’ work nor are they
averse to their artists changing directions. Ernst says,
“We try to follow it, but our heart essentially is into
the art you can relate to—if it’s interesting to us.” Gail
explains, “It’s fascinating to see the artists evolve. I like
watching them grow—that’s particularly interesting
to me. I think once we support an artist we get some
understanding of what they’re doing and what they’re
accomplishing we want to continue that.”
Eric Aho comfortably straddles representation and
abstraction. Ernst writes, “I don’t remember how we
discovered his work, but what immediately attracted
me was his ability to paint clouds in a believable way.
Clouds are abstract forms. They reflect the light around
them in a variety of ways, depending on the time of
day and the character of the land or sea surfaces below
them. It appears rather straightforward to put them on
canvas, as it looks like you can get them right without
too much effort at drawing. The opposite is true, as it
is very hard not to make them look awkward...Without
being able to explain why, I think Aho is successful
in moving toward abstraction because of his ability to
come up with interesting skies in a representational
manner.”
He describes Wilderness (Summer 1903), 2008, as, for
him, “the point when abstraction got the upper hand.”2
George Nick, Joe’s
American Bar and Grill,
2008, oil on linen,
50 x 40"
3
Paul Rahilly, Still Life
with Bread and Water,
1993, oil on canvas,
18 x 22"
3067AS WE SEE IT