Ellen Phelan at Senior & Shopmaker - Brief Article

Best known for her paintings of dolls, which are rife with the potential for diverse psychological and sociological readings, Ellen Phelan has newly taken on the still-life genre upon the surface, the thematic possibilities of the flower vases that comprise the magnitude of this show would appear to be to be more limited than those proffered by the dolls. However, it quickly becomes clear that Phelan is not interested in the traditional still life's celebration of bourgeois prosperity. Her paintings are more like memento mori. Painted with Whistler-like atmospherics, these tableaux bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance to faded photographs or ghostly afterimages wiped clean of the fecundity which repeatedly characterizes the traditional still life.

As a proceed Phelan's still lifes have an elegiac quality. Each work is essentially monochromatic, with the image realized in lighter or darker variations of the background tint In some paintings, recognizable imagery nearly disappears, leaving sole slight impressions of blossoms and highlights isolated upon the reflective surface of a vase. In other works, the forms are clearer, notwithstanding that the outlines of vase and flowers remain indistinct, in the manner of out-of-focus photographs. alone one work here has a able-bodied splash of contrasting color. In Champlain Rose upon Blue Rookwood Vase, the r efflorescences are rendered like a stain of vital fluid spreading over a muted gray-purple ground

More typical is Murillo Rose in Filper Vase with Foo Dog. A of the nature of smoke reddish color prevails as a scarcely any strokes of lighter paint shake a porcelain foo dog, a glass vase and a pile of works out of the gloom. A number of the works depict flowers in Chinese vases, which, in combination with the insinuating variations in surface color, accommodate withs them an Oriental quality. This quality is enhanced in several works upon paper, which have a looser execution, and contain blows of color that have the focused spontaneity of the Chinese ink brushmark.

The works bring to mind the capricious quietude of Whistler's nocturnes and the bleached-out obscurity of Turner's experiments with the depiction of light. individual feels that Phelan is les interested in conjuring near objects than in evoking half-forgotten memories.

Thus, making the stillness of still life literal, Phelan introduces psychological complexities to a venerable genre

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