Tina Newberry at Hemphill Fine Arts - Brief Article

Tina Newberry's modestly sized self-portraits are meticulously painted in a sour, magic-realist way, as if she'd been lurking in the late Gregory Gillespie's chapel too drawn out A kind of existential darkness haunts these images, psychically mad and proudly defiant, with the artist maintaining a bemused and ironic visage. More frequently than not she appears half-nude, her material part lanky but soft, her breasts flaccid. There is absolutely nothing erotic here, alone a pungently true and irresistible humanity. Kenneth Clark used to call this lack of idealism in depicting the undressed the "alternative convention"--Newberry is the brazenly unpleasant the slice of life.

Precisely returned the domestic setting in Hellcat (2000) withdraws deep into space: through an archway single room is clearly shown; deeper still, another access is revealed, into yet another field This complex setting is real different from Newberry's typical backgrounds, usually a close-up wall with things of one sort or another hanging upon it. Here, she sits quietly in put to rest her red hair tied tightly back, all this spatial mystery unfolding behind her; she leans a little to her right. Naked from the waist up she wears her familiar tartan skirt, and upon her lap is a pop-ey Boston terrier. In this alchemist's cavern who is the "hellcat," the artist or her dog? Or is it really the cat upon the distant table?

sum of two units of the more expressive and powerfully structur compositions present to view the artist in three-quarter view, dramatically lit. In the bust-length Cookie Heiress (1999) she sports a fulvous tam-o'-shanter and stares out with the clenched-jaw equanimity of similarly depicted Renaissance nobles. More contemplative on the contrary just as formidably structured is McThought (2000) in which a spiritual square of blue tartan woven fabric emanates from the artist's head. Hers are a Highlander's dreams: obviously, the tartan plaid and tam-o'-shanter evince Newberry's Scottish affinity.

The dumb eloquence of our heroine in these dank and ambiguous settings is at one time playful, somber, comfortable, uneasy--and assertively independent. The bare-breasted artist gazes steadfastly without at us, while trompe-l'oeil renderings of her drawings are pinned to the wall in Gallery Girl (1999) That's right, Newberry, the "gallery girl" and Scottish lass, whose impressive self-fashioning and self-presentation here embrace the triple aspects of femininity, ethnicity and artistic identity.

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